I recently purchased a USB to serial cable to connect to other desktop computers (reason is for headless servers), and I don't know if it is working right or I am just doing something wrong. The USB cable has a male end if that matters any.

As a test I fired up the Ubuntu installer on a to-be server with an additional parameter:

console=ttyS0

However, I fired up putty and connected to the COM port that device manager told me that USB adapter was using and did not get any output.

I just now connected the USB to serial cable to an old laptop and fired up putty on both computers and mashed some keys to see if I could see ANY output on one of the terminals. Nothing. So, am I completely ignorant on how serial is supposed to work?

Note: In order to connect the laptop to the other laptop I had to purchase a gender changer.