[Techtalk] a better linux serial console emulator?

[Akkana Peck]

Carla Schroder writes:
> I'm using Minicom, but I'm wondering if there isn't something a little better 
> to try? It's fine for everything but editing config files because it only 
> displays a line at a time. Which is ever so fun on big files, and not all 
> that fun on small files. I seem to recall something a little more robust and 
> designed for multiple machines, but I can't find it. Or anything else. I just 
> need it for one.

I use screen for talking over serial ports. You can specify the
speed as a second argument, e.g.:
$ screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

It seems to work better for me than minicom. I only have two
problems with it:

1. Its escape character is ^A, so when I type ^A to go to the beginning
of a line, it doesn't work, and if I type another one it breaks the
connection. That's easily solvable: I created a .screenrc containing
the single line:
escape ^``

2. If I edit something in vi/vim on the machine on the other end of
the serial line, when I exit vi, now screen has redefined the terminal
size to be 24 lines long, no matter how big the terminal window in
which I'm running screen. I'm sure this has something to do with the
terminal type it's sending, which ought to be easily solved, but I
haven't been able to find a solution. Anybody know?

	...Akkana