[OLUG] Anyone ever wanted a serial console...

[Tim Russell]

Interesting.

Great for a Linux machine, but not very useful for Windows - I like it!  :-)

This actually brings up a story - I (and my brothers) have a history of
brainstorming cool things but not doing anything with them - and then
noticing later that someone thought up the same thing and made a mint.
Several years back I thought up a small embedded PC built into a
refrigerator with a barcode scanner - you scan your groceries in when you
get home, and it will give you recipes based on what you have available, as
well as making up shopping lists for you automatically.  Now we have the
Martha Stuart KitchenPC and the total refrigerator thing has actually been
demoed by a company in Germany, I think.

Anyway, I actually thought of something along these lines quite some time
back - a box for use at remote sites that would receive a (text mode) screen
from a PC, digitize it and read the characters from it, and send them out a
serial port.  Keystrokes back can be sent to a PC keyboard port pretty
easily.  Actually, this would probably be better implemented using Telnet
protocols with an Ethernet port.  Put about four ports in a rackmount box
and I think you'd have a hot seller for colocation sites.  And it would work
for Windows machines as well.  Once it's actually up in graphical mode, you
can use X on a Unix machine or PC Anywhere on a Windows machine.

Consider this a freebie and run with it - but this message constitutes prior
art, so don't try to patent it!  ;-)

Tim #1



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