How cool is that?! Next up: designing and implementing a couple of project ideas I’ve been mulling for the past 6 months. Should be interesting.

For the intrigued geek, this is how I got to see the data:

Using a USB-Serial converter dongle, I connected the cable to the Mac and opened terminal. Next, I needed to grab the name of the USB device so I could open it. I did that by using the following command:

ls -l /dev | grep cu.usbserial | grep -v grep

When I had the name, I could then use the screen command to open the serial port at 2400 baud:

screen /dev/cu.usbserial-0000201A 2400

The baud rate will depend on the actual version of monitor you have. Newer versions operate at 9600 baud. To terminate the screen command, hit Ctrl-a, Ctrl-\, y.

I ended up putting all this together as a Bash script (below) so that I can quickly call it up at will.

#!/bin/bash

export cmd=`ls -l /dev | grep cu.usbserial | grep -v grep | awk {'print "/dev/"$10'}`
screen $cmd 2400
clear

Fatal malloc_jumpstart() error

If you get this error, check the version of emacs you are using by issuing the following command:

emacs –version

On my machine, this was 21.2.1. The version of emacs that ships with Leopard is 22.1.1. To fix this error and make sure the Leopard is using the correct version, you first have to blast the emacs-i386 folder under /usr/bin. My advise is that you back it up:

sudo mv /usr/bin/emacs-i386 /usr/bin/emacs-i386.bak

Next, you have to rebuild the emacs-i386 by issuing the following command:

sudo /usr/libexec/dumpemacs -d

You will see a lot of text scroll back fairly quickly. After the command has completed, check the version of emacs again. This time around it should be 22.1.1 and you’re good to go!