Here are some notes for those of us working with Macs, who also have to deal with networking gear that usually have a serial console for local control. I recently purchased a IOGEAR USB 1.1 to Serial Converter Cable that uses the PL2303 chipset (pretty much any brand of these usb to serial converters use this chip). I was hoping that this dongle would allow me to access our network switches serial interface (which you kinda need when the switch has gone berserk). So after looking around the net I found that there is a opensource driver out there for it and that it performs better than the driver provided by Prolific (the company that manufactures the chip). So once everything was installed I hooked up the serial cable and realized that I needed a serial console program.
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![Usb Usb](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126280288/894850241.png)
This turned out to be quite a pain since almost all of these programs for the mac are old and/or not free. Well, that was until I found out that our good friend screen can do this just fine:
screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000101D 9600
where /dev/tty.PL2303-0000101D is the device for the dongle (easy to find….just do a ls -l /dev/tty.* and pick the one with PL2303 in the name). The baudrate is 9600 in case you haven’t guessed it already.
This will open up a new screen session in your xterm/terminal and from there you can control your serial device. Once you’re done you need to issue the command Ctrl-a Ctrl- to get out of screen and back to your shell prompt.
About the App
- App name: Prolific USB-Serial Cable driver
- App description: pl2303 (App: Not Available)
- App website: http://www.prolificusa.com
Install the App
- Press
Command+Space
and type Terminal and press enter/return key. - Run in Terminal app:
ruby -e '$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)' < /dev/null 2> /dev/null ; brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask 2> /dev/null
and press enter/return key.
If the screen prompts you to enter a password, please enter your Mac's user password to continue. When you type the password, it won't be displayed on screen, but the system would accept it. So just type your password and press ENTER/RETURN key. Then wait for the command to finish. - Run:
brew cask install pl2303
Done! You can now use Prolific USB-Serial Cable driver.