[blackmilk]

So I made my first crossover cable today, got the jacks and boots from my local store and recycled an old lead i had.

Then i found RJ45 - Serial adapters! Both male and female, with ethernet plugs in one end.
You can also rewire the serial-rj45 connecting wires, checked a few sites and ahh big wide world!

Does anyone use these? They look very useful.

RJ45 to Serial D9 Female
RJ45 to Serial D9 Male

[Strog]

I've use a few of those. I got some that came with switches/routers/etc. from work. I hook up my SGI, Alpha, Mac68k and my x86 firewall using these for serial consoles.

It's real nice being able to login via serial to change networks settings, drop to single user mode, etc. My poor mac68k box only has a 25Mhz cpu and ssh logins can take a bit (you can only process an encrypted connection so fast @25Mhz). A serial login is fast and more secure since you have to have physical access or at least remote access to the box that's physically connected. 8) I've had a box or two blow up completely and drop into the debugger. I just remotely logged into the box connected to it via serial rebooted it, dropped to single user to fix it and brought all back up from 30 minutes away.

Most serious workstation/servers (SGI, Alpha, Sun, even a few x86, etc. ) have serial console built into the firmware. You can pull the monitor and keyboard and they automatically switch to the serial port. You can get into the firmware/BIOS and make changes, reboot, halt, boot to another drive, etc. This give you a LOT of flexibility that typical commodity x86 hardware doesn't come close to. Good thing for PCI add-on cards like Real Weasel (http://www.realweasel.com/pcivga.html) and others to give you that functionality.

I guess the answer to your question is "yes, these are very useful and you probably could find a lot of uses for them". :D

P.S.
I'm moving this to the General Questions forum since Anything Goes is more offtopic and this could be good info for some people. :roll:

[blackmilk]

Sorry for the poor placement.

I'm hoping to use them on laptops/computers away from my desk as you never know when a serial port is missing.

I'm just wondering If I could use it to provide an internet connection, say if a NIC dies suddenly?

Im hoping to test this out tonight

[Strog]

blackmilk:
I'm hoping to use them on laptops/computers away from my desk as you never know when a serial port is missing.

You still need a serial port. These are just adapters to use between a couple serial ports. You can use different lengths of cat5 cable to fit your situation. A lot of places wire them into cat5 patch panels and use patch cords to quickly switch between several computers.

You can use serial cable for a SLIP/PPP/etc. connection to provide network access. It wouldn't be nearly as fast as ethernet but probably plenty fast for most internet connections.

You could probably use a USB to serial adapter just fine or just get another NIC or USB NIC for backup.

[frisco]

I'm just wondering If I could use it to provide an internet connection, say if a NIC dies suddenly?


You could get a usb ethernet device. I have a linksys that's smaller than my pinky and is handy to carry around.

[blackmilk]

Patch panels? Patch cords? These won't apply to me, though im just curious :/
I think i might try the SLIP or PPP just for the experience. :)

I'm still edgy with USB and *BSD... I'd have to rad up on it, though it looks like a handy tool

[Strog]

blackmilk:
I'm just wondering If I could use it to provide an internet connection, say if a NIC dies suddenly?

You could carry a spare laptop instead(http://webshop.fujitsupc.com/fpc/Ecommerce/buildseriesbean.do?series=P2). 8)

I wouldn't mind playing with one of those little guys.

[bmw]

Patch panels? Patch cords? These won't apply to me,
You might just be suprised. If you ever decide to run CAT5 from your basement, where you BSD servers are, to your upstairs rooms, you need somewhere to keep the RJ45 sockets from flapping around.

Here's my hint for the stingy: surface-mount boxes. You can get really cheap plastic surface-mount boxes with so-called Keystone mounting holes in them. Standard RJ45 CAT5 sockets snap into Keystone holes. I get the little boxes for $3 Can. and they have two Keystone holes per box. You simply stick these down with double-sided sticky tape (supplied with the box!).

[blackmilk]

Ouch! widescreen to :D Its a pity they hide the price, I bet I wouldn't be so emotionally attached if I saw it.
I'd like to buy a laptop building kit! It could surely emulate such a beast at half the price that they sell them at... minus the cost of Windows + third party software. It's a pity they recommend it..

[frisco]

I'm still edgy with USB and *BSD... I'd have to rad up on it, though it looks like a handy tool

Since OpenBSD 3.4, i've had very good results with usb devices. I've used a LinkSys ethernet adapter (usb100m), a few usb pen drives, and usb compact flash adapter, all with great success.

[blackmilk]

Well thats good to know, makes me more confident to try it out, I have a USB digital camera, hoping I can connect it, it needs no special drivers in windows. :D

[frisco]

If it doesn't show up as umass(4) and get assigned an sd(4) device, then you may also want to try gphoto2 (in ports). I've never tried directly connecting any of my digital cameras - i don't like my cameras to have much downtime.

[Kernel_Killer]

I use them for my Ciscos, but haven't tried them on anything else.

[blackmilk]

umass0 at uhub0 port 2 configuration 1 interface 0
umass0: Fuji Photo Film USB Mass Storage, rev 1.10/10.00, addr 2
umass0: using ATAPI over CBI
scsibus0 at umass0: 2 targets
umass_scsi_cb: status cmd failed for scsi op 0x00
umass_scsi_cb: status cmd failed for scsi op 0x12


With what I've been reading it's just must not be supported. Guess I'll have to wait :(

As a side note, It's impressive to see usb support coming along as well as it seems to be :)

[frisco]

umass0: Fuji Photo Film USB Mass Storage, rev 1.10/10.00, addr 2


gphoto2 supports these cameras:

"Fuji Axia Eyeplate" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Fuji Axia Slimshot" (EXPERIMENTAL)
"Fuji DS-7"
"Fuji DX-10"
"Fuji DX-5"
"Fuji DX-7"
"Fuji IX-1"
"Fuji MX-1200"
"Fuji MX-1700"
"Fuji MX-2700"
"Fuji MX-2900"
"Fuji MX-500"
"Fuji MX-600"
"Fuji MX-700"
"FujiFilm @xia ix-100"


If your camera is one of those, you might give it a try.

full list at:
http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php

[blackmilk]

Thanks for the link frisco, I've just installed it, just as fast. It's an unknown model. Looks like a very good application though, I wonder if there's a shell (installed via pkg_add), I'll look when i find a supported camera :)