Reliable terminal emulation in the modern age?

Tue Nov 1 19:05:00 PST 2005

On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, Michael T.Halligan wrote:

> Is there such a thing as a working, usable terminal emulator? I'm  
> simply attempting to do some remote serial console work on a couple
> of servers, specifically in the BIOS. I'm finding this to be an  
> almost impossible, and certainly unenjoyable experience. My main  
> platform
> is OS X, on which I've tried both Terminal.app and iTerm, to no  
> avail. Not to be outdone, I've found putty on windows, and X windows  
> on Linux
> to be equally broken

what is broken ??

if you are expecting to use a remote rs232 terminal to change
the bios settings, than you'd be looking at server-class motherboards
vs consumer/generic stuff
	- you probably will not be able to change the bios
	setting for things like "boot from sda instead of cdrom"

if you use any random consumer motherboard, you should be able
to see the bios bootup messages on rs232 ..
	- just fiddle with nullmodems, rs232 cables, genders
	baudrates, stop/start bits, etc

	minicom/seyon just works out of the box except for 
	rs232 baudrate and cabling stuff

c ya
alvin