minicom... issue...

if you use linux you may run into a problem that minicom causes with your usb-serial connected hardware devices... a file is created called LCK..ttyUSB0
that is placed in /var/lock by default, and by default root owns it...  if you exit out of minicom ungracefully, you may get the message that ttyUSB0 is locked upon trying to restart... the fix is to simply remove the file with sudo rm /var/lock/LCK..ttyUSB0... however, i have found that once minicom is reopened, the output to the screen becomes garbled, as if there was a baud problem with the device...

this is bad, but here is the ticket...

run sudo minicom -s, reset the lock file location to your home directory, or another directory, and then sudo  chown (user) LCK..ttyUSB0 once it is relocated...  if minicom craps out again, just delete the lock file from the new location, and restart minicom... don't forget to save your settings as dfl prior to exiting...

minicom...

one of the beauties of nix is that it is device intensive, meaning, the operating system is hardware savvy...

windows often needs driver support when a device is added...

for a usb serial adapter to support the nix, ie, all that is required is the nix be told what device it is...

in this case it is USB0... discovering that is easy with grep (globally replace)

arteq@b:~$ sudo dmesg | grep  tty
[sudo] password for arteq:
[    0.000000] console [tty0] enabled
[    0.718578] tty ttyS4: hash matches
[    7.306285] fbcon: Remapping primary device, fb1, to tty 1-63
[    9.052698] usb 4-1: MCT U232 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
arteq@b:~$sudo minicom



at first it thinks you are trying to initialize a modem, that's why the  AT command error but...

there are a couple of setup steps for the serial port, which you can find here...

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CiscoConsole

piece of cake