Serial 4+

My company stopped using Windows laptops several years ago but, they’d been keeping one old Toshiba for years because they needed it to console a SunOS box in case of an emergency. The HD died on that poor old Toshiba a few months ago and left us in a world of pain because we had to reboot the Sun server a few days later and couldn’t watch to see what was happening. That turned into about 30 minutes of three guys scared and twitching because we didn’t know if the machine was booting or not and it doesn’t have a VGA port to plugin a monitor.

So, after that madness, I started looking for a way to get USB to serial access on our MacBooks rather than doing something like putting an old desktop next to that server. I googled here and there for a few days and kept finding forum posts from the guy that wrote Serial. I finally decided to download the trial version and test it out. I plugged in my USB to serial adapter and it just popped and worked without me having to find the drivers or anything for it. That’s amazing!

Anyway, I’d recommend this to anyone that needs a Mac alternative to Putty or HyperTerminal.

I am a sound/video technician and decided I wanted to figure out a way to control the shutter option on my Eiki LC-X6 projector with the click of a GO button from another program called Qlab. I purchased a USB Serial adapter cable and installed the driver for it. I had unsuccessfully tried a freeware program before finding Serial. Luckily, I found Serial while doing some research. I gave it a try and it instantly recognized my adapter and notified me that the driver I had installed was going to be a problem. Serial advised me to remove the driver, which I did. After that, Serial worked like a charm. I was then able to write an AppleScript (my first!) to automate RS-232 commands to Serial for shutter control and execute them from Qlab. It was totally worth the $30 as it has made my life easier. I advise taking advantage of the 7 day free trial to see if it works for you. It took me less than a day to decide as it was working so well. I’m so grateful to Decisive Tactics for creating this program as it has inspired me to do more with programming. Thanks guys!

I love this app, works with all serial adapters I’ve tried, great UI, doesn’t leave sessions open that I forget to close, etc

One bug I found was that it crashes loginwindow when used in conjuctiion with Remote Desktop and the built-in serial port on an Xserve. And then when I try to force quit Serial, it becomes a zombie process. I send HUP to loginwindow, and it doesn’t come back, so I have to power cycle the Xserve out-of-band.

It’s considered vintage so no longer supported, but it runs Yosemite, and it is a bug, though it might not affect many people. So I have to use screen for using the serial port on the Xserve, but other than that, it is a great app, well worth its price. I’d love to be able to use it with the Xserve serial port though.