Instructions: Getting the serial console to work on a MAC

[rbgray]

Interesting.   Does everyone get a different set of serial devices?   After going through the driver install procedure, I wound up with /dev/cu.usbserial-00002006A & B.  Took me a while to figure out that I'd been lucky enough to be shipped a defective USB JTAG/console cable.  The one I was shipped did not fit snugly into the Sheeva's socket.  Fortunately,  I had several spares from old digital cameras.

For those unfamiliar with screen (as I was/am), here's a link to the GNU Screen documentation.  The most important thing (which I know I've seen elsewhere,) is that to exit, type control-a control-\ .   Looks like it should be possible to set up a .screenrc file in my home directory to automatically supply the device and speed parameters.

I'm looking forward to some serious fun with this device.   

[DamonHD]

OK, I've officially joined the "can't connect from my Tiger Intel MacBook club!"

Looks like the Prolific driver is loading, since I can:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/osx-pl2303.kext

though it didn't seem to have autoloaded after reboot (my first kextunload attempt failed).

I can also see this:

# kextstat
...
   99    0 0x3dcec000 0x7000     0x6000     nl.bjaelectronics.driver.PL2303 (1.0.0d1) <94 32 11>

But:

# ls /dev/*PL*
tcsh: ls: No match.


I did also attempt a little low-level prodding, to no avail:

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions


Is this driver likely to work at all for me?

Rgds

Damon

[boerner]

Did you try the drivers from here:

http://ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

They say they work with Tiger on both PPC and Intel.

[westyd1982]

To access the serial console on the plug from my Mac, all I had to do was to install the appropriate ftdi driver from the previous post.   Reboot.  Then in Terminal type ls /dev and look for tty.usbserial.... (different tty.usbserial... depending on which USB port the plug is plugged into on my Mac).  In Terminal I use minicom installed via MacPorts to access the serial console.  Type sudo minicom -s to setup minicom (I deleted all of the modem initialization codes and setup the serial port with the appropriate settings).  Once, minicom is setup properly, I only have to type minicom at the prompt in Terminal and it works great.

[DamonHD]

OK, thanks the FDTI stuff does indeed seem to be creating /dev/ entries:

crw-rw-rw-    1 root  wheel      10,   8 Sep  9 20:47 tty.usbserial-0000103DB
crw-rw-rw-    1 root  wheel      10,   6 Sep  9 20:47 tty.usbserial-0000103DA
crw-rw-rw-    1 root  wheel      10,   7 Sep  9 20:50 cu.usbserial-0000103DA
crw-rw-rw-    1 root  wheel      10,   9 Sep  9 20:50 cu.usbserial-0000103DB

So that's progress!

Rgds

Damon

[boerner]

For a serial terminal on Mac OS X, try out CoolTerm. It is freeware.

http://freeware.the-meiers.org/

[DamonHD]

Kewl:

sudo screen /dev/tty.usbserial-0000103DB 115200

gets me (after hitting return) to:

Ubuntu jaunty (development branch) debian ttyS0

debian login:

Thanks!

Damon

[DamonHD]

Pooo...

Now I'm getting disconnected after a few minutes with the MacBook reporting overcurrent on the USB port.

The SheevaPlug doesn't try to power itself from the host (or some other weird thing), does it?

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

OK, I've switched to another lead: I think the one supplied with the kit may be dodgy...  So far 2.5h with my digital camera lead without trouble.   B^>

Rgds

Damon

[rbgray]

I updated to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard last weekend and got a chance to get back to the Sheeva Plug this weekend.  The serial device driver installation which was done under Leopard came through just fine.  Now to press on to getting OpenOCD installed and trying it.  It appears to be available through Macports. 

[burn]

Has anyone tried this recently on snow leopard?  It looks like the package on the wiki and the link here have both been updated, and I couldn't get either of them to work with the plug (or patch).  I had to boot into win7 just to use Martin's deb installer '

[darkscout]

Has anyone tried this recently on snow leopard?  It looks like the package on the wiki and the link here have both been updated, and I couldn't get either of them to work with the plug (or patch).  I had to boot into win7 just to use Martin's deb installer '

I did. Last night, no problems after adding the patch.

I actually did it manually. I just opened the Info file, found generic device and copy and pasted the XML. I named the new device "SheevaPlug" and then added the appropriate vendor ID and product ID. Take note... that it is in base 10 while SystemProfiler provides it in Hex.

[gfarrell]

I can't get the console to connect using Snow Leopard on a Macbook pro. I installed the drivers and edited the file (patch didn't work and I got the error that the patch was malformed at line 4 so I manually made the changed).
The tty.usbserialXXXXXXX is created in /dev/ but only when I use kextload. I've tried using screen and coolterm but both just show a blank screen. I've tried both the original cable and my camera cable. I was unable to find it on the network either so I couldn't ssh in.

[gfarrell]

I can't get the console to connect using Snow Leopard on a Macbook pro. I installed the drivers and edited the file (patch didn't work and I got the error that the patch was malformed at line 4 so I manually made the changed).
The tty.usbserialXXXXXXX is created in /dev/ but only when I use kextload. I've tried using screen and coolterm but both just show a blank screen. I've tried both the original cable and my camera cable. I was unable to find it on the network either so I couldn't ssh in.

it seems to have worked. I typed in random stuff and pressed enter and THEN I get a login prompt. Funnily enough this wasn't working before (but maybe that was on the "A" channel).

[PlugPBX]

at www.PlugPBX.org we have a pre-build plist file for Mac OS X 10.6 you can freely download / use