Remote console access over the network (telnet)

1. The controller's diagnostic output can now be viewed over the network. The XL200's ARM processor continuously reports what it is doing — network activity, drive communication status, USB events, error conditions. Until now that output was only visible with a serial cable and a laptop physically attached at the controller. Now a technician can open a standard telnet session to the machine's IP address and watch the same output live from anywhere on the network. On EtherCAT machines this works through the USB Ethernet adapter; on standard machines it works through the built-in Ethernet port — same address the machine already uses.

2. Connecting is deliberately simple for field use. Any standard telnet program works with no special setup (PuTTY, or the Windows built-in telnet client once enabled). On connection, the session first replays the most recent couple of pages of output — so a technician arriving after a problem occurred immediately sees what led up to it — and then streams live from there. Only one session is active at a time: a new connection automatically takes over from an old one, so a dropped or forgotten session can never lock anyone out.

3. It is designed to be invisible to the machine. The console server is a small, low-priority background task that sleeps between activity. It cannot interfere with drive control, Eclipse communication, or production — and it shares the network connection with Eclipse rather than competing with it.

4. Groundwork is in place for two-way use. Keystrokes typed in the session are already received and routed into the controller's input system, ready for a future feature that mirrors the display processor's debug console — where a control character switches between watching output and issuing diagnostic commands (memory dumps, task lists, etc.). Nothing responds to input yet; this release is view-only.