[rescue] Why .* sucks (was Re: FDDI card)

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Monday, February 25, 2002 at 09:29:31 (-0600), Bill Bradford wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Why .* sucks (was Re: FDDI card)
>
> I had serial console working fine on a peecee; one of the VA Linux boxes.  Had
> to enable serial console in the BIOS, and then enable serial console in
> Linux, but it "worked".  Not great, no OpenBoot, but it worked.

I suspect you didn't test it very well.  That was undoubtably a Phoenix
ServerBIOS, and they are about the worst designed, poorest excuse, for
providing serial console support I could ever imagine.  It may work,
just barely, if you connect it directly to another PC running the
special client, at 38.4kbps or better, and if all the other factors are
in your favour.  It's useless at 19.2kbps through a terminal server to
any other kind of "terminal" -- worse than useless -- it can prevent a
successful boot even!

I had such high hopes for the latest version, especially given VA was
claiming it worked too, only to have them dashed in mere seconds of
hooking one up.

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
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