Hello AIX Group Members,
I have two systems: (1) IBM pSeries 640, 7026-B80. (2) A 5-month old HP laptop with Windows Vista. It has no serial port and only has USB ports on it.
My question are: How can I use the laptop as the p640's terminal? How can I make the connection? What type of cable should I use? A USB-to-DB9 cable will be working or not? As for software, I know I can use Putty.
Thank you in advance! 
n8
Hi
If your laptop has a DB9 serial port you just need a serial cable similar to those ones used to admin Cisco devices and a Hyperterminal connection.
If your laptop has USB ports you can use one of those USB-to-DB9 converters to connect to the serial port of the pSeries server. They usually comes with a driver so Windows creates a new serial port and using Hyperterminal you cna connect.
Hope this helps
It does help. Thanks a lot! 
There is no serial port on my laptop, only USB ports. I saw some USB-to-DB9 cables in eBay and was wondering why such "simple" cables need drivers. Your answer clarifies that the driver is used to create a new serial port under Windows.
May I assume that a USB-to-RJ45 cable does the same job as the USB-to-DB9 cable? On the IBM P640, there is a RJ45 port functioning as serial port. It also has some DB9 serial ports. On some Sun servers such as Sunfire v100, there is no serial port in DB9 form, only serial port in RJ45 form. Therefore, a USB-to-RJ45 cable may be a better choice (than USB-to-DB9) if it is working. Am I right here?
Hi
Yes. That cable does the same job. In a p6xX server there are two serial ports used to connect the server to HMC station. Those servers of the p6xx models connect to the HMC using serial comm. New servers of the p5xx models use Ethernet in order to connect to the HMC. If you don't have a HMC you can use those serial ports to open serial terminal consoles or you can use the RJ45 port to do the same. Just need a different type of cable.
Hope this helps
We don't have a HMC station for this p640 yet. What type of HMC station do you recommened? Thank you!