In message <200112250115.UAA29425@definitely-not-swedish.mit.edu>, Alex writes:
>1:  tyan _appears_ to be making, in the Thunder K7, a dual-cpu
>    athlon motherboards with dual-ethernet and built-in serial
>    BIOS control, which presumably could be taken over by the OS
>    at boot time as its serial console.  (I say "appears" beause a
>    quick glance through the manual doesn't make it clear one way
>    or the other that it actually *has* a serial console on the
>    BIOS, as I've been old it does.  I suspect this is a matter
>    of PC motherboard terminology not matching my expectations.)

Tyan tech support says it does, but the manual makes no reference to it.
I expect to eventually find out.  I am not sure Tyan tech support knows
what the phrase means.

>2:  any number of Intel "serverworks" based boards if I punt my
>    Athlon preference.

Yup.

>What have people been using to build headless servers lately?
>What do you like or dislike about it?

I dislike the fact that "serial console" appears to mean about as much as
"dysengooberated mornengatz" to most of the component vendors, especially
motherboard people.  It's not that they don't do the feature; it's that a
couple of them *have* done it in the past, but still can't figure out
what I'm talking about when I ask them.

-s