Building a serial and VGA "everything console"
11 points by classichasclass
11 points by classichasclass
I was disappointed you didn't get the IBM keyboard/ultranav working. That was by far the least bad device I ever worked with on the raised floor.
I've considered making a thing like this before, but I've been pretty happy with a Thinkpad T430 booting Linux from a cheap SATA SSD and a USB serial adapter.
Edit: I was so focused on the terminal part that missed that you were using it as a VGA monitor as well. I'd be curious to see how the eBay costs stack up for a T430 (or similar) + crash cart adapter + USB-serial stack up to the 1U drawer thing + the serial gadget you got.
I really like the terminal adapter and that's why I'm putting up with it, but so much of this article was basically me working around losing the UltraNav.
What crash cart adapters are you looking at?
I've been seeing the BlackBox KVT100A come up on eBay for <$200 lately and think it'd pair well with a ThinkPad that age. There's also a StarTech that comes up in the same price range, but I think it has DP instead of VGA and I'd rather not fiddle with that adapter.
I've been meaning to make a small NetBSD image for a Raspberry Pi that'll quickly boot in to a full screen serial terminal, with tmux screens for each USB-serial connected to it. It'd be a heck of a lot cheaper than $85 and would take any kind of USB hub or keyboard.
What about for the display? The main thing here was to collect the display and keyboard all in one place.
Oh - I figure any display will do, since HDMI to VGA adapters can be had for something like $6.
Composite is even an option. I currently have a Pi set up with a tiny 5" composite monitor I got from Ali-express for $10 or something like that. I just don't have the quick boot, read-only image I want to make.