[rescue] Re: Small serial terminal

[Gavin Hubbard]

>Okay.  I'm looking for something along the lines of "smallest possible 
>AC and/or battery-powered VT100 compatible serial terminal".  
>
>Having a P3 laptop as a serial terminal is overkill, having a Televideo 
>950 is overkill size and power-wise.  
>
>I've got a Jornada PocketPC at work, but the screen and keyboard is too
>small (has to scroll to do 80x25).
>
>I'd like to avoid using a laptop for this purpose, unless its something
>small that I can boot off a floppy (and not have to power the HD).

<snip>


Hi Bill

I had this exact same problem. The best linux serial terminal program I
have used is the following one:

http://www.eskimo.com/~johnnyb/computers/stl/

It boots of a floppy disk (no hard-disk required) and the nice thing is
that it binds a virtual console to each serial port. This means you end up
with separate serial terminal for each serial port on your laptop :-)

Since my laptop does not have a serial port or a floppy drive, I am using a
Keyspan USB serial adaptor and VMWare (yes this is overkill for a serial
emulator but minicom is excellent). I then get VMWare workstation to map
the adaptor to a serial port and boot from a 'virtual' floppy drive (really
just an ISO of the floppy). I also have an old DEC P66 in my workshop that
boots from this floppy. I recommend the software without hesitation.

Best regards,

Gavin