James B. Byrne wrote:
> I have an i686 mono core system configured as a CentOS-5.2 server. It has
> one DB9P RS-232 serial connector and six USB connectors. The DB9p is
> configuered as STTY0 for the attached MultiTec MT5638ZBA fax modem. I
> would very much like to connect my MS WindowsXPpro laptop, which only has
> USB connectors, to this server via telnet or ssh over a direct connection.
>
> Is there a way to connect / configure a comm port to a raw USB port in
> windows / centos and to use a direct cable connection between the two? Or,
> is a usb to serial converter device required at both ends?
>
> I expect to use either puTTY or hyperterm as the windows client. What I
> need to know is:
>
> Is this is even possible?
>
> How do you configure the tty ports on CentOS for this to work?
>
> How do you configure the comm port on MS-WinXPpro?
>
> What cable does one require?
>
> I have never had this problem before since all our hosts have previously
> come equipped with two serial ports. However, the next generation
> machines apparently have no RS-232 serial ports at all, just six usb
> ports. So, this problem might as well be faced now as later, when it is
> unavoidable.
I can't imagine why anyone would want to do this on any system capable
of using a network connection instead. You can get usb cables that are
really back-to-back usb<->100BaseT adapters and they are popular now
because Windows/Vista knows how to migrate things from an XP box with
them but it is still a fairly dumb concept if a real NIC is a
possibility on at least one of the ends. The reason you don't see much
about this kind of scenario any more is that most people would have a
cheap home inernet router that would provide the network interconnect
and act as a DHCP server to take care of the setup automatically. If
you don't have/want one of those, a crossover ethernet cable will work
with one, both, or neither NIC being a USB adapter and you can easily
hand-configure the addresses.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com