I have made my WYSE serial terminal work with my Linux server. After yesterday’s confusion and frustration I went back to Maplin and bought a few things that made the task very simple. I bought a properly wired DB9-DB9 null modem cable, a DB9 gender changer and a DB9-DB25 adapter.

All it took was for me to connect the DB9 serial cable to the second serial port of the terminal, plug the other end into my server and run a getty. This is how easy it should have been yesterday, but it seems I was using a wire not designed for connecting between PCs and the terminal. God knows what it’s for, but it didn’t work.

I’ve written up a small Drupal book about my method to make this work. Read it here.