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CHAPTER 4: Operation
4. Operation
4.1 Overview and Cabling
Once Serial Upgrade Kits and serial-supporting main firmware have been installed
in your ServSwitch™ Affinity system, the new serial features will become active
(without changing any of the Affinity’s KVM-switching functions). These features
allow you to use any attached keyboard/monitor/mouse user station to
communicate with an RS-232 device such as a router, hub, or the serial port on a
PC, UNIX
®
, or Sun
®
computer. Just connect the serial device to one of the CPU
ports on the Affinity with a special serial cable (see below), configure that CPU
port as a serial port with the desired data rate, and you can access the serial device
as you would during any terminal-emulation session.
Here’s how it works: The Affinity has always had serial communication chips
present on each computer port, so it’s no problem for the Affinity to transmit to
and receive from serial devices. And the Affinity’s OSD (on-screen display) is so
powerful that it actually functions as a complete color terminal. The Serial
Upgrade Kit modifies the OSD firmware to implement VT100/101/102/202
terminal emulation, scrolling, a hardware cursor, cursor controls, and other
necessary elements to convert and format serial data to color VGA signals. In the
other direction, the PS/2 or Sun keyboard signals are converted to serial data and
transmitted back to the serial device.
Keep in mind that, at this time, the Affinity doesn’t support hardware flow
control, but is transparent to software flow control.
We offer four types of cables for connecting serial devices to the Affinity. (Note
that, even though the Affinity’s CPU ports are DB25 male connectors, they are not
pinned the same way as the serial ports on a PC, printer, or modem even when
they function as serial ports.) The cables are:
Product code
Device-end connector
Device type
EHN290
DB9 female
PC or compatible DTE
EHN291
DB25 female
PC, terminal, or compatible DTE
EHN292
DB9 male
Modem or compatible DCE
EHN293
DB25 male
Modem or compatible DCE
If you need some other type of cable or adapter to reach some other type of
serial port or device—for example, the serial ports on some Cisco routers or the
8-pin DIN serial ports on legacy Sun computers—call Black Box Tech Support. We
might be able to give you a quote.