Re: OT: 5 new PC's required

["David Buckley" <db@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Patrick Lidstone" <patrick@l...>
wrote:
> David, can you elaborate on this? How does TS offer/facilitate
> supplementary/remote serial port access?

I better make myself clearer here - by terminal servers, I dont mean
Microsoft Terminal Services, a software product that allows one host
computer to "partition" itself into lots of computerettes, each
of
which can be accessed using a TS RDP client.

Oh no, I mean a terminal server, a box with an ethernet port and one
or more physical RS232 ports on it, for example the MSS100 that
Keving was flogging a while back.  Most of these devices come with
software that can be installed in Windows (or linux) which presents
on the box as a virtual COM port, which an application cant tell
isn't a physical serial port on the PC.  Velly handy :-)

Somewhat annoyingly, VPC (still!) only supports COM1 through COM4.
And having just finally bottled up to installing the Microsoft
version, although in general its as good or better (and yes, you can
now map the emulated ethernet card onto a bridge port - yay) they
have dropped at least one feature.  Connectix VPC allowed
connections to the VPCs using VNC, which although I never used it, I
thought that was a neat feature.  But its now gone.  And they
haven't replaced it with, for example RDP.  I think I understand why
they did it - they didnt want competition to Microsoft Terminal
Services, but it doesnt make me any happier!