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Turning Your Mac Into a Serial Console Server
chrisbw writes "Want to put that old VT100 terminal to use? Mac OS X Hits has a story on how to make a couple simple changes in OS X to enable login on a serial terminal (even over a USB serial adapter if you're on a newer mac). Cool trick for adding a text-based web surfing or email terminal in another room, or remote iTunes control!"
for educational establishments instead of usimng big sparcs it could come in handy
Actually, OS X runs on my old 233 MHz G3 tower, which came out around a year before the iMac, which was Apple's first USB equipped Mac. However, this computer does have a USB card in it.
Vonal Declosion
Well, my point was that if you're on a newer Mac that doesn't have a serial port, that you can use a USB serial adapter and OS X will happily use it as a regular tty.
Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/
I'm not sure he's the one that missed the point.. A 486 has serial ports too.
1 used 486 = $0 to $25
1 home made null modem cable = ~$2
For about the same price, the 486 is also capable of functioning as an X terminal with sound, etc, like he said.
Actually, it will run on almost anything, just it doesn't want to. What many people are doing nowadays is buying old clones and using XPostFacto (try versiontracker.com) to install OS X where it wouldn't normally go. Like on a UMAX clone with a G4 800Mhz upgrade card in it.
- Sherman
You might be able to cook something up with a Palm and a USB audio converter, but you wouldn't need a serial console to do it. However, here's a better idea:
Get the SliMP3. It connects to your stero system and has an ethernet port on the back. Grab a Linksys WET11 and it's wireless if you can't run ethernet to your stereo for some reason. It works with iTunes and you can keep all your music in one place.
There's always TopGunSSH . Its a old-school Palm SSH program, so you can get the command line on Palm. When I connect to my Mac OS X box with it (over TCP/IP mind you, though i think it can still do serial communication. Check out TopGunTelnet for pure-serial emulation.), tcsh by default has problems, most noticeably it seems to not to be able to run Pico or Vi (let alone Emacs).
I havn't messed around with it enough; i've only used it in cases where i need to a little command line hacking from my Treo.
--- Kicking the Cheat since late 2002
At no time in Macintosh history did they have an industry-standard serial port, so you will need some kind of adapter to use a regular tty with any Macintosh.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
This might answer your questions (look at section 6):
http://www.netbsd.org/
Short answer:
setenv input-device ttya
setenv output-device ttya
Want it persistant after a reboot? Modify the settings in /etc/default/kbd
Wheeling back on topic, Mac USB-serial adapters advertised as such are kind of pricey. However, you can also buy a less capable USB-serial adapter advertised for use with serial palms and so forth. Generally, they're not as good, but will still do the trick.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier