On 7/31/2022 1:23 AM, Ali via cctalk wrote:
I am looking for some advice and recommendations on how to best go about
accomplishing the following:
I have recently come into possession of an actual physical terminal that can
be connected to a device via a standard RS232 (serial) port, so far so good.
I have a number of devices that can be connected to for maintenance (e.g. FW
updates, configuration, etc.) via a serial port. Currently I have been using
an old laptop with a terminal program (Procomm Plus) whenever I want to
connected to one of these devices. This involves crawling around connecting
the serial cable, doing what needs to be done, crawling back disconnecting,
rinse and repeat.
I can connect the physical terminal to one device at a time and have a
permanent connection to that one device, great for one device but not so
useful.
So I was thinking if it would be possible to do this over the LAN.
I know about console servers where I could connect multiple serial devices
to the server and then access each device over LAN via a telnet client on a
modern system using an IP:port schema. This works great except I don't get
to play with my shiny, new to me, authentic experience terminal device.
So I am wondering if there is a box that provides a telnet CLIENT to a
serial port device? I.E. a box smart enough that handles the telnet client,
LAN functions, and terminal emulations internally and then provides a text
based interface through a serial port that is compatible with my physical
terminal? That way my physical terminal would be connected to the RS232/LAN
bridge all the time and I could connected to not only the serial ports
connected to the console server but other telnet accessible services as all
the heavy lifting would be done on the bridge. I am ideally looking for a
ready to go, low power device, I can hide away as opposed to setting up a PC
of my own running some *nix flavor that I know can do this but is way over
kill. Oh yeah and if it is super cheap even better. Thanks!
-Ali
I got a Lantroix SCS 400 off of ebay for cheap. 4 Serial DB-9 ports,
one RJ45 LAN port. Has built in Telnet , SSH. I think you can go back
the other way, i.e. Computer -> LAN -> into one of the RS232 ports.
Never used it that way.
Used it to connect actual terminals to Vax computers, very easy.
Connecting to Linux was hard, Linux doesn't like old style TELNET by
default.
Doug
