[Beowulf] Re: multiport RS232 to ethernet (or USB)

[Jim Lux]

At 06:26 PM 4/10/2006, Warren Turkal wrote:
>On Friday 07 April 2006 00:05, Chris wrote:
> > As a student hiding in the corners and under the stairs on this list i was
> > wondering why you guys would want to be connecting things to your marvelous
> > clusters with RS-232 type ports. i mean there's many other ways to
> > interface right? So what'cha plugging into these contraptions?
>
>I am thinking they are probably using serial terminals for monitoring or
>something like that.


aka "out of band monitoring and control"

There's an enormous amount of inexpensive widgets with serial ports to do 
things like look at voltages, currents, and temperatures, and/or actuate 
relays, etc.

Jim