raspberry pi and serial console

[Gregory Nowak]

Hi all,
not totally speakup related, but close enough I think. I know there
are a few of you here with raspberry pis. Is it possible to connect
the usb to ttl cable to the right pins on the pi, put in somewhere
something like console=ttyS0,115200 and get a serial console from boot
to shutdown? Logic suggests this should be possible, but I haven't
seen an explicit mention of it in my research so far. If this is
possible, then were you able to figure out without sighted help how to
connect the cable to the pi? If yes, then some pointers would be
welcome. I seem to recall Mike Ray wrote an article about this on
raspberrypi.org, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore.

What kind of a connector is on the other end of that cable, the end
that connects to the pc? I've read that you don't want to plug that
end into a standard rs232 port because of the voltage being too
high. If it is a standard db9 female plug, then is a usb to serial
converter ok to use here? Are all motherboard serial ports on
computers out of the question unless you make some sort of a converter
board first between the pi and pc?

Some components are on the brink of failing in the x86_64 machine that
is serving as my router and freenet/i2p node, and the mobo seems to be
one of them. It looks like the raspberry pi 2b should be a nice and
cheap replacement for most if not all of what that failing x86_64
machine is doing now. I'm also going to need another usb wired
ethernet card, so if anyone can recommend one which you know works
with linux, that would be appreciated. Unfortunately the product
descriptions don't indicate the chipset a given card is using. I plan
to be shopping at newegg.com. Thanks in advance.

Greg


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