I have a redhat shrike server serving a single application across three wyse terminals.

I want to move away from the terminals as they are old and volatile and expensive to replace.

What I want to do now run an emulator on a windows or pc.

Is it as simple as connecting the redhat server to the other network and runnng an emulator? What software should I use for this? open source preferably.

Could you not just use SSH on a PC to connect to the server? Or is there a reason you want to avoid having a fully functioning PC?

That was my original plan I just wasn't sure if something like putty would effectively do the same job as a wyse terminal. I was just after a bit of reassurance it would work as I only have access to this setup occasionally and wanted to go in prepared.

On the physical setup of things, the server uses an Ethernet cable to connect to a an io box which then feeds severeal serial or parallel cables that supply data to the terminals.

Would I be able to just put a switch between the server and the io box to supply the data to pc running putty?

Presumably I then just give putty the ip of the server and run a session as usual?

PuTTy is capable of connecting via the serial port.
Hyperterminal is the native windows terminal application.
Are you wanting to eliminate the serial interface?

As mentioned putty does serial connections just fine as well. I think the biggest question you need to answer is, is this server networked? If it is networked are the PCs networked and able to connect to it? If so there is no real reason SSH wouldn't work.

If you need to keep it as a serial connection then it is possible, but I have only done a single connection to a COM port. However my guess would be that if it is already working then you won't have any problems with putty (which is 10x better than HyperTerminal to me).

Thanks guys

Currently the two systems are completely separate.

The linux server goes to an io box via cat5 cable and the box then feeds each of the terminals by serial cable i understand. I don't know if it is a standard serial cable that plugs into the terminals. If it is, then presumably i can plug this into a pc and connect using the pc serial port with either hyper or putty.

The other option is this....
my client wants to add a server to his windows pc s. I was going to suggest adding something like zentyal on a linux box and the joining the old linux shrike server onto this network also. that way he could pass files to shared drives easier. At the moment he has to use a floppy to take files from the linux server to his pc to email it. In this scenario presumably it would be best to forget connecting through serial ports and just do it via the ip network?

thanks for the help so far, i think it's time i actually got hands on with the network again and see if each method works.

Thanks

I think if this server has never been connected to a network we should examine why that is, and if connecting it might cause any problems. Shrike is a rather old distro too, and no longer has security patches so that is a concern when this is no longer a stand alone system. Is there any reason this application couldn't be run on a newer server and more recent OS?

I never used Zentayl but adding a dedicated file server shouldn't be that difficult. I am not a huge fan of the all in one gateway type server since it seems that having your internal files on a server also acting as a firewall could lead to problems. However if you just wanted to use it for the other services behind a dedicated firewall I see no major issues.