Hey there everybody,
I just saw that ASRock Rack lists an item named PAUL on their website. It seems to be a PCIe card with an ASPEED AST2500 and a VGA+RJ45 port combo. Included on the AIC are a bunch of extra headers useful in server applications!
I am sooo stoked for this thing! I‘ve been waiting for a company to release this sort of a card for motherboards which don’t have such server features. This could finally become a reality!
What do you look forward to to use this with? Please let me/us know down below! I would love to find out what professionals and consumers alike will make of such an accessory!
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=PAUL#Specifications
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That looks pretty sweet; a USB-A port might have been nice for a troubleshooting (I am not familiar with DB-15 and whether it takes any input or is output only)
Typically output only, just another name for what we recognise as VGA out.
That’s a pretty cool, I like that they went to quite an effort to make it full featured and not cut it down to bare minimums.
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Oh, now this is potentially a way to get a server like feature-set on a AM4/TR4 board with better pcie layout than something like X470D4U.
Very nice find, but it will come down to price/availablility which I do not foresee to be low/plentiful.
I does have an internal USB-A 2.0 port so I hope that your question has been answered. 
Yeah when you mention that motherboards like the TRX40 Designare come to mind with the nice 4-slot layout with a single x1 slot. I wonder what people are going to do with it!
Well I expect availability to be good at launch but the launch itself is going to be VERY far away considering it’s niche status and the cadence that ASRock announces and releases their server gear.
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Or ‘m.2-PCIe riser’ > ‘miner usb riser’ > this card. (if you can find a free expansion slot on the case)
Then there is no need to waste a mobo slot.
Edit:
Actually there is also a very nice side potential for this: OpenBMC
If this is not bound to a single board then there is a higher probability of support.
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The internal port does not allow for external peripherals.
The only input seems the network port, which would be the main interface used anyway, it just seems odd to have a vga port for local display, but no local input.
Why?
It’s should act like a very basic 2D GPU (so every motherboard no matter how it behaves without a GPU should be able to POST), no need for inputs since you can just use the motherboard’s IO (the USB Pin header on the AIC is probably there to relay the IMPI keyboard/mouse inputs to the motherboard)?
The USB-A port is there to boot off a bootable USB drive via IPMI.
(All just assumptions based on my tummy)
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Anyone know if they already started selling these? Can’t find them anywhere.
Nope, I highly doubt they would be available in such a short time after appearing on the website.
I suggest you hit the asrock sales: [email protected]
or one of their retailers: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/buy.asp
My question about availability is waiting for the response for over a week now, but the more people ask/show interest the more likely it is we will get an answer.
I wonder if thunderbolt support is feasible.
Thunderbolt on an IPMI Card? 
I got a technical question regarding how this card works… would this card need any kind of support from the BIOS or CPU? I can’t really imagine how this would work universally on any number of boards?
For boards that have built-in IPMI of course they are built for that, but this being an add-in card also means that the PCIe lanes have to be active at all times, no? I’m not really sure how this would be feasible with a “normal” motherboard. Or am I misunderstanding how the IPMI works on a hardware level?
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You could make it work on most boards, not sure what the compatibility would be. You could do PoE in to give the board power when the system isnt on, pin the power switch to it etc. Run VGA from gpu to the card for graphics input and usb to a header inside for keyboard mouse etc.
Well the card is its own GPU, no? Isn’t that the whole point?
Keyboard and Mouse input is done via the internal USB header from what I understand, I was just wondering about the booting functions.
But since you mentioned PoE that got me thinking they probably emulate a Wake-on-LAN signal on the card to wake over the PCIe…
Really curious how this all works 
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Yeah sry been long work day.
Booting is just shorting two pins together you would just run the boot pin from the mobo to this then from this to the power switch.
Mh I guess if it’s being done the “analogue-way” that would be the case yeah, don’t see any pins on the card for that though.
Was just wondering how Onboard-IPMIs do it too, but then I remembered that they are probably also connected via PCIe…
There are a ton of pin headers on the board
Yes, but I don’t see any that look power related. The labels all have debug and fan and USB and what not on them 
Aux 1 and aux 2 probably completely programmable