Suggestions for decent multiport serial cards

[Devon H. O'Dell]

Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> In message <4177B6D7.2060704 at sitetronics.com>, "Devon H. O'Dell" writes:
> 
>>Hello list,
>>
>>I'm looking into making a console server for my machines at the 
>>datacenter, and I'm wondering what decent (and hopefully inexpensive, of 
>>course) multiport PCI serial controllers are available.
> 
> 
> One thing you may want to consider is this interesting gadget:
> 
> 	http://www.bwct.de/multi_serial.html
> 
> it's a six port serial USB adapter and the man behind the company
> is tisco at freebsd.org
> 
> I havn't tried it myself, (indeed I may even have broken the driver
> for it :-), but it looks a lot more sensible to me than PCI serial
> ports since you can locate it closer to the machine and only have
> to run a USB cable over to it.
> 
> To make it 100% ideal for me, it would have a reed-relay output
> next to each serial port, so that I can use it as a remote reset
> as well.

Thanks, PHK.

This indeed looks very interesting, and might be ideal as I do live in 
Holland, so it won't be a big hassle to ship things. Interestingly, I 
took a look at their site, and they appear to have a ready-made 1U, 
18-port console + relay solution for only 567EUR, which might be ideal 
for me.

I'm definitely going to ask for more information on this.

Kind regards,

Devon H. O'Dell