Re: hardware with serial console

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> I'd like to make my development a bit less painful.
> Serial console access would be nice.

Depending on why you want serial console access, it may be enough to
just tell installboot to set consdev to com0 (I think that's the magic
incantation).

Assuming you want serial console for more than just the OS console....

> Can I get a PCI card to do it?  do I need a special motherboard?  it
> doesn't seem to be a commonly advertised feature.

In mass-market consumer machines, it's not, though some have something
not entirely unlike it under names like "console redirection".

In some other markets, it's less rare.  I've seen machines (eg, some
PCEngines hardware) that don't have the hardware for any other kind of
console.  None of the examples I've seen have been amd64 (all i386),
but it would surprise me if instances didn't exist.

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