Monday, August 31, 2020

Re: Can I boot without GPU ("headless")?

On Mon, 31 Aug 2020 15:49:24 +0200, Zeljko Jovanovic wrote:

> But wasn't the conclusion of this discussion that you can just buy
> one, connect it to computer only for booting, and then disconnect
> it and use on another one?

He needs to be able to enter the encryption key at boot time.
Opening up the case and temporarily installing the motherboard
serial cable doesn't seem like a good solution.

> Somebody mentioned serial ports not being "hot-plugable". This is
> not a concern here, as the serial port is built into chipset and
> remains there - you are just moving the connector.
>
> The connector/adapter you need is something like this:
> http://www.kelco.rs/katalog/detalji.php?ID=19753 , but as somebody
> else wrote, the pinout is only informally "standardized", so it is
> best to check it in advance.

You can also find these cheaply direct from china. I saw ones for
$2.35US/each shipped at AliExpress, cheaper options probably exist.
You do need to be mindful of the distance from the pins on the
motherboard to the slot you are using, some of those cables are
quite short.

> Alternatively, instead of buying it, you can find such bracket
> (usually with one DB-9 and one DB-25 port) on old (very old!) PCs.
> I found mine many years ago in some old 486 waiting to be recycled.

Yes, this was fairly common in pre-ATX machines. I have a few
harvested from old machines before I recycled them.

- todd

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