I bought a USB Serial port that had MAC drivers. Check before you buy it that it has drivers. Not all USB Serial have MAC support. I assume that you have installed the correct drivers from here.
- You'll need to get a usb-serial adapter and then connect with a console cable. Adapters aren't very expensive. Connecting to the Console Port with Mac OS X To connect a Mac OS X system USB port to the console using the built-in OS X Terminal utility, follow these steps: Step 1 Use the Finder to go to Applications Utilities Terminal.
- Serial is a basic terminal emulator that can help you connect and control serial devices, such as servers, network equipment like routers or modems, PBX systems, and so on. The good news is that Serial comes with built-in support for most serial devices, so you do not have to manually install any.
Mac Terminal Serial Port
First, open Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal). Next, type
ls /dev/tty.*
Serial Tools for OS X, includes a Terminal Emulator, a Protocol Analyzer, and a serial port monitor to watch for connections and removals of serial ports. Serial Tools is completely free, and available from the Mac App Store.
to get a list of your serial lines. Pick the one that you want to open. For example, my list looks like this:
gf:dev gf$ ls -al tty.*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 4 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-Modem
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 8 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 10 Jan 25 09:20 tty.PL2303-0000103D
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 0 Jan 25 07:32 tty.SerialPort-1
gf:dev gf$
And I know /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D is the USB-to-serial adaptor becuase it's connected, if you unplug it the tty.PL2303-0000103D stops being listed.
Knowing the serial port, you can just type screen portname datarate to show the serial data on the screen. In my case, it was:
screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D 9600
Mac Serial Port
To quit the screen app, type control-A, then control-.
Postscript
I don't think that this is very complete, but it worked for me and might help you to get your USB serial working. Please let me know if there anything I can add to complete this piece.
Update 2008/12/28: A reader has pointed out this article is based on a similar article at†http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/resources/archives/avr/000749.shtml. I must have copied some of the text and then mistakenly believed it was my own. Apologies for this mistake.
Serial Terminal Mac Catalina
Using screen as a serial terminal on Mac OS X
Geek Inc.If you develop on an Apple and find yourself doing any sort of device or embedded development, you will quickly find the need for a serial terminal on Mac. There are a few software apps out there, but I find it much simpler to simply use the terminal application 'screen'.
This works well particularly if you have an RS-232 serial to USB converter.
The first thing to do is determine which device you want to connect to.
Once you've determined which device you would like to use, you can execute the SCREEN command to start the serial terminal session on your Mac. Remember to specify the speed (baud rate) after the device name.
Once you've connected, you can use the terminal as you normally would.
To exit (and close the screen gracefully) press:
Serial Tools for OS X, includes a Terminal Emulator, a Protocol Analyzer, and a serial port monitor to watch for connections and removals of serial ports. Serial Tools is completely free, and available from the Mac App Store.
to get a list of your serial lines. Pick the one that you want to open. For example, my list looks like this:
gf:dev gf$ ls -al tty.*
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 4 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-Modem
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 8 Jan 25 07:32 tty.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 10 Jan 25 09:20 tty.PL2303-0000103D
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 18, 0 Jan 25 07:32 tty.SerialPort-1
gf:dev gf$
And I know /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D is the USB-to-serial adaptor becuase it's connected, if you unplug it the tty.PL2303-0000103D stops being listed.
Knowing the serial port, you can just type screen portname datarate to show the serial data on the screen. In my case, it was:
screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000103D 9600
Mac Serial Port
To quit the screen app, type control-A, then control-.
Postscript
I don't think that this is very complete, but it worked for me and might help you to get your USB serial working. Please let me know if there anything I can add to complete this piece.
Update 2008/12/28: A reader has pointed out this article is based on a similar article at†http://www.tigoe.net/pcomp/resources/archives/avr/000749.shtml. I must have copied some of the text and then mistakenly believed it was my own. Apologies for this mistake.
Serial Terminal Mac Catalina
Using screen as a serial terminal on Mac OS X
Geek Inc.If you develop on an Apple and find yourself doing any sort of device or embedded development, you will quickly find the need for a serial terminal on Mac. There are a few software apps out there, but I find it much simpler to simply use the terminal application 'screen'.
This works well particularly if you have an RS-232 serial to USB converter.
The first thing to do is determine which device you want to connect to.
Once you've determined which device you would like to use, you can execute the SCREEN command to start the serial terminal session on your Mac. Remember to specify the speed (baud rate) after the device name.
Once you've connected, you can use the terminal as you normally would.
To exit (and close the screen gracefully) press:
Screen will then prompt you to quit and kill all of your windows. Press 'y' and you'll be back to your shell terminal.
This method works equally well if you want to connect to a serial bluetooth device. You must simply make sure that the bluetooth device is paired and active. Then you will be able to see the device in the list of devices. Once you've connected to the serial bluetooth device with screen, the connection will be held active for the length of your session.
I've used this method to connect to the sparkfun Bluetooth Mate Gold. It simply appears as a serial stream that you can communicate with exactly as you would with any other serial device.
