“After all, while it might be OK for the laptop support group to reformat your laptop when they can no longer cope with the increasing complexity of desktop operating systems, reformatting the network usually isn’t an option.”
— This is what makes networking so complex
Small update on console servers: Having actually tried, HW Software VSP is the thing to get for adding a virtual COM port to Windows. You need to get the singleport version, and then point it at the ‘telnet’ protocol port on your ser2net server. Now you can change the baud rate and other settings in your Windows app (e.g. Hyperterminal) and the settings are passed through to the remote serial port.
Finally you can virtualise that application with the weird serial hardware!