Thanks everyone for all your replies, wow I got a lot more than I bargained for, TEA rocks !
So looks like these cables could be useful then, so will keep them.
The DB9 / RJ45 one for consoles ? Hmmm.... it so happens that I was donated a terminal box !
Never used it, never looked at it in any detail... and never used a terminal box before... now is the time !
It's a " pizza box " form factor, like the some of the old Apple McIntosh.
Manufacturer :" Axel ", made in France it says on the tin.
Model : " AX 3000 ".
I don't know how "dumb" that terminal is...
At the back we have... oh, how fitting.... an RJ45 socket !
So I could try my DB9/RJ45 adapter to see if it does what's it's likely to be doing...
Has a DB25 serial port, and also a DB25 PRINTER port... so it must possess at least some.. smartness, if it can handle a printer...
PS/2 for the K/B.
I just could not resist, I sticked a monitor and K/B to it and powered it up see what that does !
It works !
It displays a black screen with a few words at teh bottom to identify itself. Then if you press any key it clears the screen and put a blinking cursor in teh top left corner of the screen.
Typing stuff on the K/B has no effect whatsoever from that point, though !
I guess the "Echo" mode is disabled ?!
I made the hypothesis that it might be smart enough to have some kind of a " BIOS " to let one configure it... so I tried a few special key combination at random... and evenutally found the lucky one : ALT + CTRL + ESC.
Menus are in COLOUR, wow luxurious are we...
Lots of options in there, brrr... scares me to think how many months one could spend in there, trying to configure everything to get it to behave just right !
You can handle / emulate 19 different types of terminals, should do it !
It can also handle virtual consoles / mulitple sessions, up to 8.
Can display 80 columns orf course OR... 132 as well !!!
Uh.... didn't know there was such a standard ?! Boy that must be hard to read !
Couldn't find how to configure what key or key combination triggers the printer... so I just assumed it must be the "Print Scree" key... tried that whilst in the menu.
Seems to work : after a few seconds it times out and says "Printer does not respond, do you want to keep trying or give up ? ".
My printer cable is not long enough to reach the terminal, too bad...
The RJ45 is labeled " Auxilliary" on the back panel... the menus let you configure what you can do with it. It's not just a duplicate of the maiun DB25 serial port. Nope, the RJ45 port can be configured as the console port of course, but also a a mouse port, how cool, and also as a printer port... albeit a serial one of course.
So overall quite a cool and flexible little terminal ??
Will definitely play more with it later... but it would be good if I could activate the Echo more so I can see on the screen what I am typing on the K/B... I did not find any option for the in the menus.
Maybe it is tied to the type of terminal that it is set to emulate ?? Some types give echo and some don't ?
It is configured for VT220 presently.