Getting Started Terminal Emulators

Minicom

By default, all diagnostic messages from the Linux kernel on the target, and the initial shell, will directed to the SH4 serial port. You could connect a serial terminal to the serial port, but it is probably easier to use a terminal emulator running on the Linux PC. The most common terminal emulator for Linux is minicom.

For more information about minicom, check the man page, or the documentation, which is typically installed in /usr/doc/minicom-1.82.1/.

Just to get you started, to set up minicom, simply log in as root, and type:

minicom -s

This will start up minicom in its setup mode. The default configuration is designed for use with a modem, so you will need to make a few changes first:

• In the Serial port setup menu:
  • Change the Serial Device to /dev/ttyS0 if you are using the first serial port on the PC (called COM1 when running Windows), /dev/ttyS1 for the second serial port, and so on.
  • Change the Bps/Par/Bits field to 9600, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. This is the default settings used by the Linux kernel, however these can be overridden from the kernel command line, by adding extra parameters to the console= option.
  • Turn off both Hardware Flow Control and Software Flow Control.
• In the Modem and dialing menu you may wish to remove the Init string and Reset string completely.
• Finally save the configuration. If you don't want to overwrite the default configuration, use the Save setup as.. menu option to save a named configuration, typically I use the serial port name, ttyS0 for example. Then when you start minicom next time, simply add the configuration name as a parameter to he command.