> Obviously we can easily get a USB to serial adapter You can still get laptops with real serial ports (HP sell them). You might want to investigate whether you can manipulate the USB serial adapter to your requirements. I tried once with setserial and it didn't work - I havent had time to look into it further (potentially driver dependent??). Minicom works fine for configuring routers/unix boxes however.
absydos adam # file /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/ttyUSB0: character special (188/0) absydos adam # setserial /dev/ttyUSB0 Cannot get serial info: Invalid argument -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
