[Info-vax] virtual consoles

[Rich Jordan]

On Oct 19, 2:19 am, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
>
>
> I have really old terminal servers---20 years or so.  Would they work?

In a hobby environment, sure.  For production use, consider what
happens if you lose power.  Your console DECserver goes down.  The old
ones without flash won't come back up until the VMS (or other) load
host comes up enough to provide that service.  If it doesn't come up,
your console DS is a useless brick and you have to manually connect a
terminal to the console ports if something has gone wrong.

If you can find one, a DECserver 90M or DECserver 700 with flash is a
much more robust way to go; sadly they've held on to their values
_really_ well compared to the older units.  But they'll boot
themselves up without needing a load host, so you can actually use
them to access the remote consoles even if your VMS boxes refuse to
boot (AUTO_ACTION=HALT ;)

Plus as previously noted, they can do both LAT and Telnet, so you can
TELNET to the server and connect to the console service of your
choice, if you can't access via LAT for any reason.