I find netbooks (or even old, obsolete laptops) are perfect for this, much more reliable than dumb terminals and considerably smaller, too.  I’ve installed OpenBSD on a few ancient 486 laptops and set them up to launch screen(1) directly upon booting… and they boot faster than some of the old terminals!  With netbooks, obviously you need to use a USB-to-serial adapter since none of them come with serial ports.

Surely your department has a closet full of ancient laptops that still power on?

-Adam

From: roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of Kevin McGregor
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2011 13:24
To: MUUG Roundtable
Subject: [RndTbl] Terminal

Anyone have an old dumb terminal sitting around they don't need/want? Preferably small in dimensions? :)

Kevin