Dan I have stacks and stacks of serial console servers. Today I mostly use an https://www.coolgear.com/product/32-port-rs-232-usb-to-serial-adapter with some pictures of the guts at https://lathama.net/Tech/Hardware/USB-32COM-RM if interested. It is my solution to a quick build of an https://freetserv.github.io/
(I have seen some things) On Wed, Dec 17, 2025 at 5:51 PM Dan Mahoney via NANOG <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey there folks. > > Dayjob has historically used USB TTY pods attached to real BSD machines to > talk to our cisco consoles, with the amazing benefit that with a program like > Vixie's rtty (or conserver) you can also capture the output of those consoles > in real-time, and perhaps use that data to identify a connected device. > > As a bonus, because the rackmount devices have real DE-9's on them, it means > they work with any kind of cable you get (not just your standard rj45 cisco > rollover like you might get with a Cyclades thing -- and you don't have to > come up with the weird-ass mappings for rj45-serial like you might need like > our ME4012 NAS (the serial cable is a stereo plug), our smart power strips > (it's either a stereo plug, or an rj12), or something like an older brocade > switch (it's a DE9, but it's friggin ODD, and I think it may also be the > wrong gender). > > It also means, since you're running a real OS, you have patches as long as > the OS is supported (so you're not stuck with "gee it only speaks rsa1024"), > versus some EOL appliance. But it's also 2u, and since we're recently buying > a lot of Dell hardware, that's Super Overkill for a dell, so I'm evaluating > maybe just going "Appliance". > > If we stick with an existing unix box for this, I'd want something with > proper IPMI/OOB (so Rpi is out) but maybe the dumbest, shallowest-depth > atom64 supermicro you can find, in the event you need to do a reinstall or > catch a hung system. > > Are there things that other folks are using that are "easy" to work with that > you've found to have Long firmware lives, decent warranties and low hassle? > Does anything these days actually have DE9s on it? > > -Dan > > (You may have also seen my note earlier about the Cisco ASR920, which has > RS232 pins in a USB-A header. No, not via a PL2032 chip inside the host that > provides a virtual serial...direct txd/rxd/gnd/cts etc, on the USB pins. > I've seen things you people would't believe) > _______________________________________________ > NANOG mailing list > https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/5VV3B6CVSW3KVIFFU4GOF5V5FAI625IG/ -- - Andrew "lathama" Latham - _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/CPBVORP6B7P5ZJ6CN4TX4YZNFYWZMGSC/
