ZTerm or other terminal emulator?

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Andy Dannelley - 12 Apr 2005 19:05 GMT

I have a need to connect my Mac (OS X 10.3.7) to an RS-232 device.

I believe I can use a Keyspan USB serial adapter to convert USB to
RS-232, now all I need is a terminal emulation program to communicate
with the device.

I looked around and found ZTerm. The current version is 1.1b7 and has
not been updated since 2002.

Question, is ZTerm a good choice even though it is still listed as beta
and not updated for several years?

If not ( like the price of ZTerm. $20) can someone recommend a simularly
priced terminal emulator?

Thanks for any and all help,

AndyD

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D P Schreber - 12 Apr 2005 20:56 GMT

> I believe I can use a Keyspan USB serial adapter to convert USB to
> RS-232

I'd recommend this instead:

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/usb_serial.htm

It's cheap and effective, though you might need to look around for a
driver, depending what version of osx you're running.

> now all I need is a terminal emulation program to communicate
> with the device.

ZTerm with the adapter above works well for me in this context.

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Verne Arase - 29 Apr 2005 03:48 GMT

> I looked around and found ZTerm. The current version is 1.1b7 and has
> not been updated since 2002.

I've been using ZTerm 1.1b7 without problem for my (admittedly few) serial
needs.

It talks over bluetooth to my cell phone, to my internal modem, and over my
Keyspan USB adaptor.

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Howard S Shubs - 29 Apr 2005 12:59 GMT

> It talks over bluetooth to my cell phone, to my internal modem, and over my
> Keyspan USB adaptor.

What does it see on your cell phone?? It hadn't occurred to me to try
that!

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Though I've tried, I've fallen... / I have sunk so low
I have messed up / Better I should know

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D P Schreber - 29 Apr 2005 13:50 GMT

>> It talks over bluetooth to my cell phone, to my internal modem, and over my
>> Keyspan USB adaptor.
>
> What does it see on your cell phone?? It hadn't occurred to me to try
> that!

Modern cell phones have lots of interesting data on them: address book,
ring tones, background images, calendars, photos (for camera phones),
etc.

My phone isn't bluetooth and can't easily be accessed via zterm, but I
regularly use a special purpose Python script called 'bitpim' to move
information between the Mac and the phone over over a usb/serial cable.

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backebergd - 18 Jun 2005 23:06 GMT

I've covered getting MacOSX to talk to serial devices using minico
(free) and the Keyspan USB to serial adapter on my website
http://www-math.mit.edu/~dave/bugs/#powerbook_seria

--
backeberg
macosx.com - The Answer to Mac Support - http://www.macosx.co

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Mac Forum / General / Networking / June 2005

ZTerm or other terminal emulator?