IBM real deal

For the last couple days, I've been messing around with an IBM server at work. It has perplexed me greatly. There is nothing so quaint as video on the box. There is not really a place to plug in a keyboard. There are USB ports, but they Are not really for such simple things as input devices.

On the front of this box is a little pop out control panel. This has a USB device on it. This USB plug does not go to the computer. This USB plug goes to the control device that tells you how the real computer part is doing. Even if the main board blows up, the memory packs it in and the CPU has a melt down, this bit of the box will work and dutifully tell you in no lack of detail precisely how fucked your server is.

It has hot swappable fans.

The instructions were very clear. Hook up a null modem to the serial port and establish a dumb terminal connection. Done. Wait, no, it isn't working. Why is there not any data traveling across the serial connection? What the hell?!? I just hit a brick wall. The damn thing will not talk to me. I made plans to call IBM on Monday and ask them how much of a dumb ass I was being. I knew I was doing something wrong on a very simple level. The documentation made perfect sense. It was clear and complete. I was missing something at the rookie level.

The serial port I was plugged in to looked like this. This is the kind of device I look for when you say the word "serial port". It turns out that IBM has a different standard when it comes to console connections. They look (in fact are) single line phone cables that use a converter from the more standard D9 configuration. This is exasperated by the fact that I'm using a USB to serial convirter. Ate least I was getting the same results in both Windows and Linux.

Thank goodness our new IT person had some experience with IBM servers before. I would have been lost. It did make me feel much better that the two smartest people at the company on such matters also had a hard time figuring this out. Now I know.