You may install pld on machine that has no monitor. All you need is a null-modem cable and a second computer with terminal emulator (minicom, kermit, HyperTerminal, whatever) or a hardware terminal (like Wyse). Serial console is very common on big machine farms, with lots of server boxes and without workstations. Some hardware, like Sun SPARCs, Compaq Alphas, many network devices like Cisco, Fore/Marconi or 3Com have a native serial port support (including BIOS prompt). You don't have to keep a monitor or monitors in machine room, you don't have to take it with you every time you go to check why the machine you upgraded last night doesn't respond and so on - you take a notebook (it could be anything, like an old 386 or even 8086 with a floppy disk with DOS 3.3 and kermit installed on it) and you don't need anything else. Make sure you have a full nullmodem cable (with 7 or more wires). If you want to make such a cable by yourself - no problem. You can find pinouts here: http://www.hardwarebook.net Don't forget to check out the Yost page about serial console cables. You'll find there how to make an RJ45 to DB9/DB25 adapter: http://Yost.com/Computers/RJ45-serial/ You set your terminal to: 9600bps, 8 data bits, none parity, 1 stop bit, with no flow control (hardware and software off), VT100 or VT102 emulation. Run you terminal program and then insert a PLD bootable floppy or CD-ROM into the target machines drive, and turn power on. If your BIOS does not have serial console support, just wait a moment for a boot - if you didn't set the boot device to be "drive C only", after few moments you should see PLD bootdisk logo. Type "serial" in boot prompt and press ENTER. If you can't type anything - be sure to check if you turned hardware flow control off. See how the kernel boots, and wait for shell prompt. Voila, now you can do everything like you would when sitting before a monitor. After installation, don't forget to install getty_ps, and set up a console in inittab: S0:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS0 9600 vt100 When configuring lilo, use: serial=0,9600n8 in global configuration, and append="console=ttyS0,9600n8" for every kernel image. This way lilo will prompt you on a serial console, and kernel will use /dev/ttyS0 as /dev/console. Try it - it really works, and once you start using serial console, you will find it really useful - for example think of remote console access.