It's interesting; those machines were very different from consumer gear of the time. Especially the lack of necessity around the video card and local keyboard/m

It's interesting; those machines were very different from consumer gear of the time. Especially the lack of necessity around the video card and local keyboard/mouse. You could just as easily boot with console being a serial port. Modern PCs can use EFI over a serial console so they're a lot closer these days. (Fun fact: Sun once made a 386-based workstation.)