So, if you want to connect directly to one of these systems (none of which have keyboards or screens, also called “headless” systems) you have to use the serial port and a desktop computer running terminal emulator software, connected via a special cable called a null modem cable. It’s pretty much universally recognised because the standard is so oldĪs far as the devices we sell at Yawarra, serial ports are standard on our ALIX, APU and net servers.It can be supported directly in BIOS, and.It can be shoved into a very small chip, that doesn’t cost much.It’s a much lower overhead than a Gigabit ethernet port, or wireless connection.In fact, they worked so well, that support for them is still built into new systems today, for a variety of reasons: When serial terminals were the norm, specific protocols were created to allow systems to communicate over serial lines, and these protocols worked really well. So now, instead of a big clunky green screen and keyboard, we use a piece of software that pretends to be a serial terminal by emulating it.

By Jason Scott (Flickr: IMG_9976), via Wikimedia Commonsīut it’s big and heavy, and these days we have more modern computers, right?