[rescue] The best 'rescue' workstation

[Nathan Raymond]

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> Evil thought: Now is about the time for someone like Sun to decide that
> PC BIOS is cool, and start building their machines to require video to
> use the BIOS...

Hardly.  Did you look at the review of the Sun Fire 40Z I posted to the 
geeks list back in February?  I found the section on the 'BIOS' 
fascinating:

"The MPC855T PowerPC or Service Processor (SP) as it is more commonly 
called in this analysis is in fact an entire embedded Linux computer of 
its own. Even when plugging in one of the managed power supplies, the SP 
kicks on and boots up. All management of the system is handled through 
this minicomputer: the serial console, front console, BIOS, fan speeds and 
even power draw. Even when the machine is off, the SP allows us to manage 
the status of the system, even if it has crashed, remotely or locally. In 
a worst case scenario, the SP can actually be rebooted from a hard switch 
in the rear of the machine."

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2354&p=5

Sounds pretty ideal for an x86 system to me.

- Nate