Using Terminal to connect to serial port

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Level 1

0 points

Using Terminal to connect to serial port

Can anyone suggest a way to use Terminal (or another app) to connect to a USB port to which has been connected a USB to Serial converter cable (USB-A to DB9)?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Nov 2, 2006 1:48 PM

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Answer 1

maxg4

Level 1

5 points

Nov 2, 2006 4:11 PM in response to mac2sun

The best solution I have found for this has been to use a program called Zterm. I do not know of any other way to make terminal.app an externally connecting console, but zterm does exactly that.
I have used zterm for a couple years now to console to networking equipment on my powerbook usb-db9-rollover rj45.

Hope that helps. Sorry I couldn't provide a way to use terminal directly.

Max

Mac Pro 2.66Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.8) Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz

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Answer 2

mac2sun Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 3, 2006 6:33 AM in response to maxg4

Where did you get your usb-db9-rollover rj45 cable? So far all I have found are usb-db9 cables and then RJ45 adapters. I suppose I could do one up myself, but I would rather drop a few bucks on one done right. ;^)

So, Terminal cannot talk out a port? I seem to remember that any *NIX terminal program could be aimed at any port, I just don't recall how. I figured the trick was how to point at the port in a way that says a USB port is a serial port. I have seen some stuff on the net saying you need a cable specific driver, but I can not confirm this.

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Answer 3

reese_

Level 4

1,735 points

Nov 3, 2006 4:40 PM in response to mac2sun

Mac2sun,
You can also use minicom, a CLI app, to talk to the serial port. Zterm works great, but I thought it odd that I had to run ARD to get a desktop so I could run a terminal, esp from a remote site.

http://minicom.darwinports.com/

Reese

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Answer 4

Nov 15, 2006 6:50 PM in response to mac2sun

I found this works much better than Zterm:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061109133825654

I added baud rate set in my applescript so it looks like this now:

tell application "Terminal"
do script with command "screen -U /dev/tty.KeySerial1 38400"
set number of rows of window 1 to 100
set number of columns of window 1 to 150
set background color of window 1 to "white"
set normal text color of window 1 to "black"
set custom title of window 1 to "keyspan-1"
end tell

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Answer 5

Nov 4, 2006 9:56 PM in response to mac2sun

You could purchase a KeySpan usb to serial adapter which comes with a driver which creates an entry in /dev. Then, for example, perl scripts can receive data from serial devices.

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Answer 6

Nov 4, 2006 6:53 AM in response to mac2sun

You can buy a Cisco console cable which is a rollover rj-45 to db9, or a rollover rj-45 adapter which you can use with any standard ethernet patch cable.

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Answer 7

Nov 5, 2006 5:14 AM in response to LittleSaint

Here's a handy link for creating your own cable adapters:
the 5-in-1 network admin's cable

--
Cole

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Answer 8

Nov 16, 2006 10:00 AM in response to Paul Lima

Wow! I've been using screen since 1992, but I didn't know you could redirect its I/O so simply. That's cool!

I love screen...

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