So I think I may have worked out what was going on with that serial cable. I think I had the pins in the fixture backwards. Oops!
I bought a new Mini Din 8 today and soldered it up. Took a little longer than planned as I got to pin 3, looked down at my workbench and realised I hadn’t slid the back cover on before I started so I needed to desolder then resolder those pins. As usual I “toned” it out with a multimeter and made sure it was “sane”. After that it was a matter of plugging it in, firing up a terminal at both ends and… success! What I typed on one appeared on the other. Two computers communicating despite around a 20 year gap between them.
Next step was a bit harder. I wanted to set up the serial port on my Linux box as a true “Terminal” so I could connect to it via serial directly from the Mac. My ‘Google-Fu’ was weak today, as I couldn’t work out how to ask for the right instructions. My usual group of tech heads also were not sure exactly what I should be doing. Eventually I hit the right combo of search terms that brought me to this Stack Exchange article.
Sure enough it worked. I had the command prompt showing on the Mac terminal application. Next stop: ZModem!
That came a lot quicker. that was a simple install of the lrzsz package. (sudo apt-get install lrzsz)
It’s currently copying a 5MB file via ZModem. This is glorious!
(Best of all, I can use the cable with the Apple IIgs for ADTPro as well)
(I also did some woodworking today. Made a stand for my Wife’s laptop and some monitor stands for some of the old LCDs lying around the house.)
Leave a Reply