[TriLUG] Stupid question time - Serial terminal and Linux

[Magnus Hedemark]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Mike M wrote:

> Was it a sparc or something that has a reasonable serial interface? If
> so then life will be much easier.  It's the x86 archs that are
> non-trivial for serial consoles.

The terminal, in my case, is a PC.  The other end is usually, in my case, 
a sparc.  You have pretty full access to everything with a serial console 
on a sparc (or most other non-PC platforms for that matter).  On a PC, 
unless you have special hardware, you can't get into it from the serial 
port until the OS is up and even then it has to be specially configured to 
give you a serial console.  The non-x86 hardware gives you serial console 
at a much lower level, such that you can send a BREAK to the OS and have a 
boot PROM prompt.