Fun with ones and zeros
Mac OSX USB-Serial Adapter
At work I occasionally need to work with devices that have serial interfaces, like Cisco Access points, and wanted to do so with my MacBook. One particular USB-to-Serial adapter that I found works OK is a Sabrent SBT-USC1K, which uses the same MacOSX Prolific driver I had installed a while back for use with a GPS. I've used this on both MacOSX Tiger (10.4) and Leopard (10.5).
There are probably lots of USB-Serial adapters that work with a Mac, and even use that same driver. I just thought I'd jot down one in particular, so someone doesn't have to make a wild guess and order something hoping it happens to work with OSX.
posted: Sunday, 16 March 2008 15:27 | tags: hardware macosx
Comments
#2 Tiffanitsa commented, on November 4, 2008 at 10:24 p.m.:
I'm also wondering how well this works and what you've done to make it compatible. I'm totally blind and love my Macbook (Voiceover is the best) but want to use it with a braille embosser that has a serial port. So I'm in the market for a good adapter. Someone recommended a Keyspan one but I'm open for suggestions.
#3 Dravis commented, on July 5, 2009 at 10:59 p.m.:
Whenever I plug mine in, it doesn't show up in /dev/ . I was going to use minicom or zterm or whatever to console into my Cisco devices, but can't make it show up on the Mac.
Oddly, it loads just fine on the Windows side in VMWare.
#1 Avi commented, on July 17, 2008 at 5:52 p.m.:
Funny, I couldn't get it to work. Same one, downloaded the latest drivers, got nowhere. Install, reboot, but nothing shows up.
What did you do?