Re: x86 serial support

[Douglas Wade Needham]

Gee...how long has it been since I threw out the old TTYs and LA120s
I used to use as consoles!!!  But I know in the realm I work
(networking gear and telecom server), serial consoles will continue to
be there.  Even the latest cPCI blade servers all have a serial port
for consoles, if for nothing else than to set parameters for things
like dhcp, long before the network is up.  Indeed, the equipment one
of my employer's OEM partners is getting from Intel by default has a
serial console configured (9600 8N1) which allows you to get into the
BIOS or do anything else.  And a PXE booted GRUB 1 worked great on it,
and was able to load the ISL image to prep the disk in these boxes
with our network switch software.

My personal opinion is to say that for serial ports, the minimum we
should consider should be ANSI or VT100.  After all, who out there
cannot get their hands on a package such as Kermit.  It has been an
age, but IIRC, even the program on Windows supports these two types.
But if you think about it, it should not be that hard to output 24 or
25 lines each time you need to redraw.

- Doug

Quoting Yoshinori K. Okuji (address@hidden):
> On Friday 12 August 2005 18:01, Marco Gerards wrote:
> > Why can't we use a menu?  Is it really that slow to update the menu
> > over a serial console?
> 
> In a dumb terminal, the problem is that there is no way to go back to a 
> previous line.
> 
> Honestly, I do not want to support dumb terminals. They are rarely used 
> nowadays, even though the maintenance cost of an independent menu interface 
> is quite high. Today, even fancy serial terminals are also disappearing. 
> Since most embedded systems have ethernet interfaces, the future will be net 
> console rather than serial console.
> 
> Okuji
> 
> 
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-- 
Douglas Wade Needham - KA8ZRT        UN*X Consultant & UW/BSD kernel programmer
Email:  cinnion @ ka8zrt . com       http://cinnion.ka8zrt.com
Disclaimer: My opinions are my own.  Since I don't want them, why
            should my employer, or anybody else for that matter!