Re: FreeBSD > 4.11 hardware issue with Asus PSCH-SR/SATA mobo

Begin <e6mdo6$2g12$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 2006-06-13, Chronos <chronos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Its proper name, as has been said many times, is a null modem cable.
Another, later, MSese name for them is a laplink cable, although that
has been out of use for ages.

<ObNitPick> Actually, the latter are ment to interconnect peecees by
blatantly abusing their parallel ports. </> I did find a conspiciously
yellow DB25M<->DB25M cable, still sealed in grubby plastic, in a grab
box somewhere, took it home, and lo and behold, I could run PLIP over
it. Runs at a fairly nice 40kByte/sec, even if it does eat cpu like
there's no tomorrow.


Be sure to match the serial port settings on both ends, though. I
*think* the defaults are 9600:8N1 (9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity,
one stop bit) after a quick glance at ttys on this box, but ICBW.

They usually are, until you hit on some crap applicance that defaults
to, say, 38400, or maybe 115200, and that almost naturally implies it
doesn't expect a glass tty but at least a vt100 (or worse, something
that understands ``pc ansi codes''), and doesn't at all deal well with
connecting to it (through a serial console server, perhaps?) well after
it has booted up and painted its screen once. Repainting the screen?
wassat? A key for that? The very thought!

FreeBSD defaults to 9600 8n1, or at least it did last time I needed it.
It is possible to change that default, be it ever so inadvisable.


To everybody who's reading and now wonders why I say that's inadvisable:
The reasons are not so much technical, as conventional. Do remember that
while 9600baud is *slow*, it is also quite fast enough for booting,
running fsck, and bringing up an ethernet interface with, it works,
and it is still the de-facto standard in serial consoles just about
everywhere. That makes it very convenient to stick to 9600 baud and not
have to work out the actual speed by trial and error whenever you really
really need at least something to just work. Such occasions do happen.

This is also why I really would prefer laptops to have a hardware serial
without having to resort to usb converters or other things that in this
context definately count as ``fancy stuff''.


--
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