What Scott said... I used an analogue cd cable to make mine. I can take a picture if you want... I think there is a brief serial how to on the fedora ARM pogoplug page. It was essentially most of my notes sans my mistakes.. I think for ten bucks they sell a usb serial adapter for the raspi that should work.. from the people that sell the pi plate.

----- Reply message ----- From: "Scott Sullivan" scott@ss.org To: "Robert Moskowitz" rgm@htt-consult.com Cc: "arm@lists.fedoraproject.org" arm@lists.fedoraproject.org Subject: [fedora-arm] Problems with a pogoplug v02 Date: Tue, Apr 16, 2013 8:58 pm

On 04/16/2013 06:58 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:

On 04/16/2013 05:40 PM, Scott Sullivan wrote:

...

On 04/16/2013 05:24 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote: I am looking at the instructions at

...

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F18/GuruPlug

And am I suppose to be using a serial port during this first boot? I do have a USB serial device, but I would need that on my linux notebook for a serial port. Oh, wait, I have an old XP notebook with a serial port... If this USB serial device works, do I use a 'regular' serial cable (whatever that is these days) and what port settings do I use?

/!\ Do Not Use a normal serial adapter/port! The logic levels will be at 12volts and will fry your pogoplugs UART.

The pogoplus expects 3.3V logic level. I personally use one these https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9873

Where does this get plugged into? Do I break open the case? All I see on the outside is power, LAN, and 4 USB ports.

Internal Header, this is a good photo. http://www.hack247.co.uk/hack247/wp-content/uploads/serialport.jpg

I've got a little adapter cable I built to go from the JST connector for the serial to the correct pins on that USB to 3.3v Serial adapter.

You'll find the vast majority of arm devices do not have proper 12v RS232. Instead they have a UART which is serial with only the TX, RX and GND lines. The usually operate at the core logic voltage of the SoC and if you apply the wrong voltage you'll fry the UART.

Most of my devices have had 3.3v serial UARTs including the openWRT capable routers I experiment with, so I invested in that adapter. It's served me rather well as I can easily us jumper wires for custom adapter cables for each board.