Thanks for the earlier tips.

So I've gotten a DIN8 serial cable connector.  Now my question is
this: do I need to use a null modem cable, or should the wiring
between the Thinkpad and the powermac be straight through?  The
following, from http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/faq.html ,
makes me think that the cable should be straight through:

  Your serial console settings should be 38400 bps, 8 bits, no parity,
  1 stop bit, no flow control, and you can typically use a standard
  Mac "printer" cable to connect two Macs (even m68k-based Macs). See
  the NetBSD Serial Port Primer for additional help.

I guess that printer cables would be straight through.

I've gotten the cable configuration into a state that looks right to
me, but I still can't get a login prompt from the powermac, and I
think it might be because I'm using a null modem cable. (Before I try
booting with a serial console, I thought I would try to get serial
login working first).

I checked /etc/ttys on the powermac, and it looks like it has the
right settings out of the box for tty00.  I'm using kermit on the
Thinkpad.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

-russ


danieleggert@mac.com (Daniel Eggert) writes:

>  
> On Monday, February 10, 2003, at 02:52PM, Russell McManus <russell_mcmanus@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> >I'd like to try booting my powermac 7300 using a serial console, but I
> >don't have another mac available to serve as a terminal.  instead I'd
> >like to use my thinkpad laptop, running NetBSD 1.6/i386.
> >
> >The trouble is that I can't find the necessary cable to pull this off;
> >the Mac has an unusual serial cable.  Has anyone done this before?
> >
> 
> Some would argue, that the IBM-PC has an unusual serial cable ;)
> 
> Mac's use RS-422 that allows higher speeds and longer cables than RS-232, but you can use it with RS-232 anyway.
> 
> Check out
>     http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/Hardware/Misc/serial.html
> 
> 
> Daniel