11 Jun
2009
11 Jun
'09
2:20 p.m.
On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Kirn Gill<segin2005 at gmail.com> wrote:
Graphics hardware on a server becomes useful if the
server needs to be
fixed.
None of my SPARCservers have graphics hardware, but it's trivial to
diagnose and repair them using the console serial port. Same goes for
my VAXen.
It's also good for debugging.
So is a VT100. An LA120 is better (by creating a literal paper
trail). We ran printing consoles on our major machines at work
through the end of the 80s. After that, the cost of the paper
outweighed the value of what was printed, so we switched to dumb
terminals. There was one time, though, when the paper console logs
were useful - we came back to work after a weekend to find that
someone had spent the entire weekend banging out dictionary attacks on
our 11/24 RSTS/E accounting machine. ISTR they did eventually get in
(hundreds of pages of printout later). Fortunately for us, it was a
quad-RL02 machine and trivial to remove from service and restore.
No extra configuration or effort required to save the information -
just attach a printing or non-printing terminal to the console port
and walk away.
-ethan