Serial Console

Connecting the cable

The SS4000E comes with a serial console. Unlike the linksys and other mips appliances, the CPU in this system doesn't have a serial port embedded. A special TI16C550C is added to the design, so it looks like it is here to stay. The board already has a connector to connect a standard pc cable.

See the left top on the board. If you remember those rs232 connectors from the older pc's with flatcable going to the motherboard. Well, that's it!
If you open the casing, this connector will be readily available to put in your connector.

It is there on the left of the picture. There is no easy way to bring out the cable, except through a drive slot. I've just put my cable out on the back, and put on the cover loosely.
An example cable from http://www.computergate.com/

Or try item

976253 - 89 for a D9 or

975478 - 89 for a D25 at your local http://www.conrad.nl/ .

Why?

Well. At first I wanted to make a normal impression of the thingie. So I started telnetting to the thingie. It worked. But to give a fair impression (the performance sucked), I upgraded the thingie to the latest revision software. The performance still sucked, so I wanted to install debian to look at the reason why-o-why this neat thingie sucked at performance. And then I hit my nose. There was no telnet daemon running anymore. Inspecting the firmware upgrades and such, I discovered it was commented out, but there was an ssh daemon which only should run at ramdisk mode. And yes it did not run. Anoyed I took the thingie apart, and see, my picture collection :-).

Do I need the serial connection also?

If you want to run experimental kernels, it is wise to do so. Keep the flash untouched, just download the latest and greatest kernel using s-records. If you fuck the linux flash image, you can flash a new one with the redboot boot manager. If you fuck the redboot manager, you have to start thinking JTAG real hard....