Some Suns go to the serial port if the system is started up without the keyboard/mouse unit attached. I imagine some P.C. displays can tell if the monitor is disconnected, but there is no return signal for your average VGA-style monitor port so the system doesn't know one way or the other whether the monitor is on, off or connected. Also depending upon the hardware, you may get that functionality if the video card is removed completely. Other system boards won't work at all if you do that. You pays your money and takes your chances. Other than the fact that I wasted a lot of time I didn't really have in trying to figure out how to make the serial console work, I had a load of fun. Finally, if you happened to read my response in which I mentioned the Braille and Speak, I wrote that before reading Janina's message so that confirms what I suspected. Basically, any access device you want to use that looks like a vt100 is fine. The FreeBSD boxes I worked on this last Summer are replacements for our primary and secondary domain name servers, the work station I am sending this email from, and yet another domain name server for a department on our campus that wants as fail-safe a dns system as possible. I definitely give FreeBSD high marks for accessibility so long as you don't expect to find a screen reader right on the system. As far as I know, there is none. It is the serial console I really like and the security concern shown in the setup and configuration options. Of course, once you have a FreeBSD box up and running, it acts like Linux or any other UNIX box. You will like most of what you find and probably find that a few minor things are different from other UNIX systems you have used. That makes FreeBSD no different in that respect from AIX or AT&T versus BSD-style UNIX. It is like American English from different parts of the country or from the UK. It's all English and one just has to learn the idiosyncrasies of the particular system to get the most good out of it. Janina Sajka writes: >Martin: > >I don't know specifically about the IBM Netfinity, but many, if not most >non-Intel computers will automatically use the first serial port for >communications if you boot without a monitor connected. I have even used a >Braille 'N Speak connected to my DEC Alpha this way.