Serial Console

[Alvin Starr]

Mark Hahn wrote:
>>You really want (a cheap) one of these if you don't sit next to your
>>cluster....
> 
> 
> *are* there cheap ones?  maybe I'm just too, too cheap a bastard,
> but the ones I see are O($US 100) per port.  cyclades, digi, who else?
> multiport serial cards (comtrol rocketport) seem to be around $20/pt,
> which seems close to reasonable.
> 
> has anyone tried a cluster where each node is simply has a serial crossover
> to the next node?
> 
> hmm, cyclades 32pt model, web-list price, is $2741.  that works out to 
> around 3% of total cluster cost.


well if you dig around you should be able to find a bunch of older 
equipment and quite frankly, they will work for another 10 years or more 
on average. They are more out of fashon than broken of worn out.

For example computone no longer wants to support there serial port cards 
and I think a number of them can be found on the resale market now.

The cost of USB based serial concintrators is now getting not that bad. 
For a small cluster this may be a reasonable altenitave.



-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   voice: (416)585-9971
Interlink Connectivity        ||   fax:   (416)585-9974
alvin at iplink.net              ||