off topic: LCD Terminal 2926
On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:59:24 +0100, Levente KOVACS Don't know why you are so sensitive. I gave you a better way to administer your system which is to use the...
General Schvantzkoph
I have dealt with several different systems that control laboratory equipment (xray crystallography, nmr, protein sequencers, etc) that could not easily be hooked up to the network. Some of these had dedicated nics into the equipment and the vendor would not support additional nic cards in the box. Others communicated via parallel, serial, or scsi connections. Since these systems controlled the lab equipment, provided software to the equipment, and stored the resulting data, they meet any defination of a server that I've come across, yet they do not have a network connection.
Levente KOVACS results including ... with the GP-1 kit you can connect an ordinary PS-2 keyboard and a common Hitachi-style...
Also, as others have pointed out, what do you do when the server crashes and comes up to a single-user prompt asking for a fsck? In my case, I ssh to the system that has the multi-port serial card and tip into the server's console. I would agree to a point that terminals are obsolete (being replaced by a desktop console server, a terminal server, or, for single systems, a laptop with a serial cable) but you cannot rely solely on network connections for all of your administrative functions.
Doug -- Dr. Douglas O'Neal Manager, Bioinformatics Center Delaware Biotechnology Insbreastute (302) 831-3456
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