a new toy: HP Secure Webconsole

4 June 2006, 01:41 by mark hoekstra

a new toy: HP Secure Webconsole

This week I bought a new toy from an auction-site. It’s a HP Secure Webconsole. That sounds impressive, now doesn’t it? :-) But what is it? Well, it’s a tiny box with ethernet and a serial port. I can connect any machine in my network to that serial port and when I point my browser to the IP of this little machine, a java-applet loads and tada! I can get onto the console of that machine. In my case, with a whole lot of Suns and SGIs laying around, this is extremely useful. Especially since I’ve got a misbehaving Classic II (which was my terminal before) and an eMate with VT100-software on there which time-outs after 5 minutes (I need to register it, I still have to find out if the company who wrote that software still exists).

The small little box:

click to enlarge

The powerplug needed soldering, I took the whole plug out and soldered the wire directly to the small PCB in there… I knew this upfront and the device got cheaper because of this.

What you see when you point the browser to this little device:

click to enlarge

So, now I need to make some proper cables, to connect it to the stuff I have laying around…

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JC @ 13 June 2006, 18:23 :

OMG – We have like 1000’s of these things here at work! They are cool for [ahem] personal projects…
Ian Atkinson @ 13 June 2006, 20:00 :

That looks suspiciously identical to a 10base Jet Direct box…
JC @ 13 June 2006, 22:29 :

Its packed in the same case. Hey Mark, what version is that thing running? I have the update files and the installation guides if you need them.
mark @ 14 June 2006, 15:47 :

>I have the update files and the installation guides if you need them.

Oh well, I couldn’t find out if the version I’m running is the latest or not and the HP ftp-server didn’t work…

Soooo, if you have these files for me that would be great!
Ferret Simpson @ 16 June 2006, 11:39 :

HEE!

I like it already! Trying to source one for my Sun Ultra1:140 Server (Current lacking an OS, since Fedora Core 3 is failing to boot for an unknown reason.)

Maybe Splack will work?

You’ve got OpenBSD on yours, right?
Ferret Simpson @ 19 June 2006, 19:12 :

WOOHOO! Ebay pays off well!

Secure Web Console: £1.99

Oh yeah. . .