On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Joseph S D Yao wrote:
If you want console access whether up or down, and are willing to settle for serial console access, Cyclades has stackable boxes with 48 ports each, and there exist cards ("PC Weasel", <http://www.realweasel.com/>) that allow you to work with PC systems whether they are up or down, as if on the video console.
I'd second the notion on the PC Weasel. I know the guy who designed them (hpeyerl), and they were designed from the start to be indistinguishable to the OS from textmode VGA cards and PS2 keyboards. The redraw algorithm is smart, along the lines of "screen" -- some serial BIOS support I've seen is far too full-screen-redraw happy (<cough>Dell<choke>). -- -- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com> <todd@vierling.name>