# How do I connect Psion Series 5 as serial terminal?

## andrewwalker27

I'm trying to get my Psion Series 5 connected as a terminal to my Gentoo box via their serial ports but I don't really know what I'm doing!

So far I've worked out that I need to uncomment the line

s0:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 9600 ttyS0 vt100

in /etc/inittab but thats as far as I got! I don't really know what to do next, I'm assuming I can log in using the comms software with my Psion but nothing seems to work. I've set the Psion to 9600 baud rate but I get no response except access denied or unable to open comms port on the Psion.

Anyone got any suggestions or howto guides?

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## erik258

i've done it serial-to-serial with a mips-based Handheld PC.  I can't remember how, but you have the right idea.  I think the line you show for /etc/inittab looks good.  If you run some sort of terminal software on the Psion you should be able to cat /dev/ttyS0 in gentoo and see the data being transferred.  just make sure to disable dialing and use the direct connection on the client end!

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## andrewwalker27

The thing is, all I seem to get is errors on the Psion like 

Opening serial port Access Denied

I've tried using comms and Hermes with more or less the same response.

Maybe it's the Psion that is broken but I don't know enough about it to be able to tell!

I was given the Psion second hand so it could be defective, does anyone have one of these who can pass on any advice?

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## andrewwalker27

Solved! 

I needed to switch the option "Remote Link" to "Off" on the Psion to enable comms software to use the serial port!

Easy when you know how!

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