Software designed for serial port communication
Software designed for serial port communication
This is quite a strange question, but I am searching for an operating system which can be used exclusively through a serial port. I recently acquired a Cisco ASA 5505, a small network appliance with everything required to qualify as a computer. It has an x86 CPU, 512MB of RAM, boots from an ATA interface drive, and has a BIOS. However, the only output of the system is serial; it lacks any sort of video out. This complicates my wish to hack it. Is there any operating system which will recognize (and be okay with) the complete lack of any video hardware and direct all interfacing to the serial port? I essentially want to use the ASA 5505 as a mainframe. I can access the device and send it commands via serial console via its built-in firmware, but I would like to run DOS programs. Is this even possible, or should I start looking at the pinout of the southbridge chipset to see if I can hack in a composite video port? Thanks!
It seems there might be a Debian release tailored for serial connections, possibly designed for console-only use. Based on your experience with similar setups, I can try assisting you, though I’m just guessing from past cases. I’ve never run CMDL on a network switch before.