Touchscreen display built into server case

[jkemp]

I’ve been given a free 5u rack that I’m looking to switch into. It has a 12” touchscreen display built into the front. The screen has two cables, a VGA with an adapter to an old serial COM header (touchscreen input?), and a DVI which I assume is for the video. I attached a few photos showing how it was originally set up.

Can anybody think of a way to put the screen and/or touchscreen to use? I clearly don’t “need” them to do anything… but it would be cool. I could probably just plug in the dvi and run something in the local shell to give live status (zpool iostat 1). But I’m sure there’s got to be something better.

Similar old post, but no touchscreen, and things may have changed since 2012 haha: https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/does-freenas-support-a-vga-display.10164/

 

[artlessknave]

huh. don't see that everyday.
assuming it's using the serial for control....I don't think so. you can totally get display out, but you would need something to pick up the serial controls and I greatly doubt they are anything resembling a standard on a board with PCI slots (how old is this thing - I dont see anything resembling a board model number in the pics).
you should post the specs, which is a forum rules anyway...and now I'm curious.

 

[jkemp]

huh. don't see that everyday.
assuming it's using the serial for control....I don't think so. you can totally get display out, but you would need something to pick up the serial controls and I greatly doubt they are anything resembling a standard on a board with PCI slots (how old is this thing - I dont see anything resembling a board model number in the pics).
you should post the specs, which is a forum rules anyway...and now I'm curious.

The dvi goes into some PCIE card, the vga is just adapted to a serial COM2 header. I was planning to trash the board etc inside as it’s quite old, so I didn’t bother to figure out the specs. If memory serves, there were a dozen or so custom built to monitor some sensor, this one was kept behind as a potential replacement unit and never got shipped out.

I don’t have any details on the case, there is a small “cyberresearch” sticker. Mobo says “super p3tssa”, it has a single 256mb sdr133 ram stick. The pcie card that the dvi is plugged into doesn’t seem to have anything useful written on it except another sticker that says “cyberresearch 0019389”. I had just assumed the card was graphics, but maybe not. I can put an old IDE drive in and see if I can get something to boot tomorrow to learn more.

Assuming I can get the screen to display with a modern computer, can you think and any fun use for it?

 

[ChrisRJ]

Those slots look like PCI (without the "e" at the end) to me. That would indicate an age that makes this box pretty much unsuitable for TrueNAS. Same goes for it having an IDE port and the RAM you mention.

 

[jkemp]

Those slots look like PCI (without the "e" at the end) to me. That would indicate an age that makes this box pretty much unsuitable for TrueNAS. Same goes for it having an IDE port and the RAM you mention.

I think I explained my objective poorly. I am planning to scrap all the hard hard inside. I just want the case with the screen. I’m planning to switch my existing hardware into this case when I rebuild with more HDD. I think a Dvi-HDMI adapter is all I need to get display working with modern hardware. The touchscreen will undoubtedly be trickier.

My question is, can anybody think of a way to put the screen and/or touchscreen to use?

Side note: the top slot being used by the card is PCIE the rest are PCI.

 

[Ericloewe]

My question is, can anybody think of a way to put the screen and/or touchscreen to use?

Not with TrueNAS, which barely has a text-mode UI.

 

[artlessknave]

My interest in the board was partially to try and figure out what the config of the screen might have been. apparently it's even a super-old supermicro!
PIII, wowzers.

P3TSSA | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

with that, and the manual, the control is indeed going to a serial port.
so ya.
you should be able to get the console display of a TrueNAS on it, but that's about it.

this board is too old for PCIe. that that top slot is AGP, which is pretty much video only. museum pieces.

 

[jkemp]

Not with TrueNAS, which barely has a text-mode UI.

I understand it would be text only, but I spend half my time in a linux shell, there's a ton I could have it display. Off the top of my head I could open shell and run zpool iostat 1 to get live updates on drive usage. Or if I run truenas scale then I could run basically any linux command? So I could run watch -n 1 "free -m; uptime" to get live memory, swap, and uptime.

I've run zpool iostat 1 on the local shell in my current trunas core build to try it out. I know I can have it display something, I'm just not familiar enough with the environment to know what would be most fun/cool/useful. Maybe I'll switch to scale to be more familiar, all my PCs run some form of debian natively.

 

[jkemp]

My interest in the board was partially to try and figure out what the config of the screen might have been. apparently it's even a super-old supermicro!
PIII, wowzers.

P3TSSA | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

with that, and the manual, the control is indeed going to a serial port.
so ya.
you should be able to get the console display of a TrueNAS on it, but that's about it.

this board is too old for PCIe. that that top slot is AGP, which is pretty much video only. museum pieces.

I tried booting it today, I swapped out the cmos battery and of course post tells me there is no bios. I found the bios file in that supermicro archive, but don't have an external floppy at home. So learning more about the old hardware will have to wait until I get tho bios on a floppy tomorrow. I had been planning to just toss is all immediately, but now i'm having fun trying to bring this to life to figure out what it is haha.

I could find a pcie card with a com port and maybe get the touchscreen input, but I doubt I'd ever find a driver after realizing how old this is.

Finding something fun to do with the console display once I build the new system is still the goal. I'm leaning towards truenas scale, I believe I could take advantage of debian and have more options to display?

 

[artlessknave]

find a driver

yes, this is the problem. just because you can connect it doesn't mean the OS knows what to do with it. also, hardly worth a whole PCI slot, though you might be able to find a com port, some of the even current-ish hardware still has a header. as USB-serial might get you somewhere too.

truenas scale, I believe I could take advantage of debian and have more options to display?

thinking of SCALE as Debian is incorrect. SCALE and CORE are both storage appliances that run on the respective OSes. due to that, they share some functions but are generally much more constrained.

you would probably have more sucess mucking about with it on a straight distro than with an appliance.