On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 08:13:21 -0500
david l goodrich <dlg@dorkzilla.org> wrote:

> so that would be something like this...
> DB9      MD8
> RxD(2)   TxD(3)
> TxD(3)   RxD(5)
> gnd(5)   gnd(4,8)

The TX/RX may need to be reversed, depending on whether the DB9 is DTE
or DCE. For a female connector to be plugged into the male db9 connector
on a PC, you'd want to reverse the RX/TX pinout you have there, with db9
pin 2 to MD8 pin 5 and DB9 pin 3 to MD8 pin 3. For ground, my mac cable
after being nulled puts db9 pin 5 on md8 pins 4 and 6.

In any event, it should be a simple game of switching the DB9 pins 2 and
3 and the MD8 middle row outside pins 3 and 5. Hopefully that'll work.
I'm referring to system engineer's md8 pinout which is the layout
defined by IRIX's serial man page.

> 
> and 9600 8N1 on the terminal emulator, right?  because that didn't
> work.  :\
>   --david

9600 8N1 is the sgi default, but it can be changed in the prom.
Irregardless, if you are using an incorrect value you should be able to
acquire at least some garbage and then play with the rate, stop bits,
parity, etc until it works.

-Steve