USB-to-Serial adapter problems

This is all about installing drivers and poking around with the Terminal. So
if you're uncomfortable with that, "avert your eyes at the proper moment"...

I acquired a couple of different USB-serial adapter cables with built-in
conversion chips. The thing they all have in common is that they use the
Prolific USB-serial converter IC. Prolific has an OS X driver available which
I've installed.

When I open Sys Prefs>Network>Show:Network Port Configurations I see a new
one called "usbserial".

When I open Terminal and enter

cd /dev
ls -l

I see a new device called "tty.usbserial". When I unplug the serial cable and
repeat the above listing, the device is not listed. So the driver is loading
when the adapter is connected(?).

And that's as far as I've gotten.

I read (on-line) that one way to confirm that the adapter is
talking/listening is to enter in Terminal:

cat /dev/tty.usbserial

and look for a response. When I do this the Terminal command line prompt
never returns; I have to Cmd-period (terminate) it.

I know nothing of what to expect, or if these instructions are valid (I just
*love* instructions that say "you should see..." but *never* say "and if you
don't, do this...").

The raison d'etre for this adapter is to talk to an APC UPS that has a serial
connector, not a USB.

Might this be an issue of baud rate mismatch? How does one go about setting
such an adapter's baud rate? Or is it too early to talk of that if I've yet
to confirm that the driver is talking/listening with the adapter?

Googling around, I see many have had success with such drive / cable forced
marriages, some have not.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave
--
PowerBook G3/400; OS X 10.4.11
Prolific USB-Serial 2303 driver for OS X, v. 1.2.1r2
No-name USB-Serial adapter cable (ProductID:0x2303; VendorID:0x067b)

[f'up2 csm.comm]

DaveC <invalid.DeleteThis@invalid.net> wrote:

> The raison d'etre for this adapter is to talk to an APC UPS that has a serial
> connector, not a USB.

Have you made sure you have the proper cable? APC upsen do not have the
'regular', IBM PC-AT 9pin serial sub-d pinout.

> Might this be an issue of baud rate mismatch? How does one go about setting
> such an adapter's baud rate? Or is it too early to talk of that if I've yet
> to confirm that the driver is talking/listening with the adapter?

You could get xterm - that's what I occasionally run a prolific-based
serial dongle with. There's minicom on the unix side, if you prefer
that, but it takes a bit of set-up work.

HTH,
hauke

--
Eine Linux User Group, um soziale Blockaden gegenüber Frauen
abzubauen? Da wäre ja ein Schwulengesangsverein noch produktiver.

{David Kastrup @ d.t.r}