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Makes sense, I'll pick up a null-modem adapter tomorrow and see what happens. Thanks for the answer! Just a quick question though, if I mash keys on one end I should see the keys in the terminal on the other end correct?
– Natalie Adams
Commented Nov 8, 2009 at 2:14
If you are running putty or some other terminal emulator on both ends, you might and you might not. You might only see the letters on the opposite screen if you don't have echo turned on. I believe putty turns on local echo, so you should be okay there. The other thing to watch for is the CR/LF options - you may need to play with that to get your line-feeds to work as expected. See the Terminal options in the putty config dialog.
– Shannon Nelson
Commented Nov 8, 2009 at 3:15
A little update, I was able to get a female serial cable that has an 8 pin connector (same connector as ethernet plugs) on the end and get a serial to 8 pin female (again female ethernet plug). So, I plug the female end of the serial cable from the desktop to the USB adapter and it works great from my laptop to the desktop/server. However, my old laptop wont do anything.
– Natalie Adams
Commented Nov 10, 2009 at 16:23
Does your old laptop have a (a) real serial port or (b) are you using another USB gizmo? If (a), does the laptop bios need to be tweaked to enable the serial port? If (b), is the OS on the old laptop new enough to know about serial-USB? Maybe start with a low baud rate on both ends to deal with sloppy UART timing on the older laptop, e.g. 2400 rather than 115.2k.
– Shannon Nelson
Commented Nov 11, 2009 at 4:16

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