SC114 and MacOS terminal program now working

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Ronald Maas

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Dec 15, 2025, 10:01:56 AM (2 days ago) Dec 15
to RC2014-Z80
Hi,

I've just build the SC114, and am at the stage of connecting it to minicom on Mac.
The board is working in so far that when I connect the FTDI connector to my Mac using a TTL to USB serial adapter. When I press the reset button the LED flashes twice, which indicates the board should be using the onboard serial board.
However my Mac is not recognizing the serial device that has been connected.
No output from /dev/*usb and /dev/cu.*usb* which using google seem to be the locations where a usbserial device should show up.
I'm at a bit of a loss here, and was wondering if anyone has any experience of this setup.

Any signals I could be checking to see what's going on. In the mean time I'll try and find another cable, to see if that's where the problem is.

My Mac is running Sequoia 15.6.1 with an Apple M3 chip (i.e. not the Intel CPU).

I'm trying to use this with minicom installed using homebrew.


Thanks,

Ronald

Mark T

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Dec 15, 2025, 10:19:17 AM (2 days ago) Dec 15
to RC2014-Z80

Does the usb serial adapter show up as a device connected to the mac? I’m not a mac user but assume it has a similar device manager to windows.

If the device is detected, can you try connecting tx and rx on the adapter, then see if characters typed are echoed back. You might also need to connect rts to cts.

Robert Price

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Dec 15, 2025, 10:24:42 AM (2 days ago) Dec 15
to rc201...@googlegroups.com
Hi Ronald,

I'm also a M3 Mac user.

You should be able to plug the FTDI connector directly into the Mac
without plugging it into the SC114. For me, mine shows up as
/dev/tty.usbmodem03591 and /dev/cu.usbmodem03591. The numbers will
vary for you, but they should be there. If it's not, it sounds like an
issue with the FTDI module. One thing to check is that you are using a
USB data cable and not a USB charging-only cable. I've made that
mistake before.

Good luck!

Rob
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Ronald Maas

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Dec 15, 2025, 10:32:52 AM (2 days ago) Dec 15
to RC2014-Z80
Thanks for the hints. All working now. I changed to a different cable and it's all fine now. Must have been a charging only cable I was using.


Thanks,

Ronald
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