As a learning exercise and to evaluate the OMAP chip from TI and its possibilities for MBARI, I purchased the following things from Gumstix:

1. Overo Air COM
2. Chestnut 43 Expansion Board
3. 3ft - mini-B to standard-A USB cable
4. 3ft - USB cable
5. LG 4.3" LCD panel with resistive touchscreen overlay
6. 5V Power Adapter
7. 2 Antennas for Wireless
8. Spacers
9. 8GB uSD Card

There is really good documentation for all this at http://www.gumstix.net, but most of it was centered around a linux machine as the computer you were using to connect to the Chestnut board. So for the Mac, it took a few extra steps. The Chestnut board already had an FTDI chip that converted USB to RS-232. For linux and Windows, when you plug in the Chestnut, it automatically recognizes it and you get another serial port that you can connect to. Not so for the Mac ... you need to install the FTDI driver first. I downloaded the driver from here:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

by clicking on the 2.2.14 link next to the OS X row that contained the FT232R which then downloaded a disk image with a driver installer. Just run the installer like all other Mac installations and the driver is installed. I did this before plugging in any hardware.

After installing the driver, I mounted the Overo Air COM board on the Chestnut 43 with the 4 standoffs. Then using the mini-B to standard-A cable, I connected the port labled "console" on the Chestnut to my Mac USB port. Nothing really seems to happen, but you should now have a virtual serial port for the Chestnut board.

For the Mac, I decided to download MacWise as a terminal emulator to use to connect via the new virtual serial port. I downloaded the software from here:

http://www.macwise.com/

And installed it like any other Mac software. I started up the MacWise and then using the menus, I select the serial port for the Chestnut 43. On my machine that was done by selecting: Settings->Serial Port->usbserial-A9006R0V. I set the communication settings to 115200, No flow control. Then I opened up a connection by selecting Connection->Open Connection. Nothing seems to happen, but if you then plug the 5V power adapter into the board, you should see the boot sequence start. It takes quite a bit of time for the Angstrom kernel to start up (like several minutes). Eventually, the login prompt will come up and you can login as root (no password).

After I logged in a played around for a bit, I issued the shutdown command and then powered off the board and unplugged it from my mac. I connected the LCD screen via the video instructions on http://www.gumstix.com and added the two wireless antennas. I then plugged the Chestnut back into my Mac, established a connection through MacWise and then powered up. When I saw the "Hit any key to stop autoboot:" message, I hit the space bar.