For this post we're going to talk to a device via our computer, using a program called Minicom, which is a serial terminal.
First, pick on a device. A modem, or some other device with a serial port. An old modem is probably the most likely device you might have to hand.
Not all devices with a serial port can be interacted with easily using a terminal. Some devices use a packet based protocol, where each command is a block of characters called a packet, which may have a start character, an end character and a checksum. This is rather difficult to talk to using a terminal like Minicom. Other devices are command based, like on a command line terminal. We can type in words, letters or numbers, and get a response from the device. And this is the type of kit we are going to talk to in this post.
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