Why Minicom?
Minicom's Role in this Project
Minicom is a COM package for use with most, if not all, *nix (Linux,Unix) operating systems at no additional cost.
The 5282LITE development kit comes with the Coldfire 5282 microcontroller already loaded with a monitor tool that can communicate via the DB-9 RS-232 COM port on the board. It is the monitor program on the micro that allows the use of the on chip tftp client so that programs can be downloaded to the micro. The monitor is also required to set up the initial IP address of the client and server and is used to monitor the output of any application placed on the chip that might send output to the standard out.
Minicom is open source and can be downloaded and compiled if necessary for most *nix operating systems. Some of the notable features of Minicom include:
- Free
- Open Source
- Easy to configure with textual UI