Building a serial and VGA "everything console"

Some of our recent (and some upcoming) projects are oriented to systems with serial consoles, but it's been getting pretty old dragging around old CRT terminals or tying up Mac laptops with a serial port. I'd like something that's self-contained, a little more portable and a bit less heavy. I'm sure there's any number of all-in-one setups you can buy to do this, but I'm cheap, so I'm going to DIY it.

We'll start with this used, slightly abused IBM 1U console that I got for $120 (shipped) from eBay, add a terminal emulator, and put all the fixin's on.