Initial setup issues (serial port bad?)...

Ah. Sorry. I completely misread your first question !!!
I have just spent some hours over a period of days trying to communicate
with my Beagleboard wtih the wrong type of IDC to DB9 connector plugged
in to the Beagleboard. That is the connector I thought you were refering
to.!

The actual answer to your question is: You'll need the IDC to DB9
connector that came with your motherboard.
This answer is probably not much help to you.. Sorry for the noise.

Bob

Joe wrote:

I was/am having problems with a working serial cable with garbage
characters, but have a possible solution.
The first time I tested out the Beagleboard, it worked fine powered
over AC adapter, with serial, DVI, SD present, everything
worked fine.

Later I tried it with just A/C and serial connected. most of the
characters come out were garbage, about 20% readable.
Part of the time input was accepted. This was with both a USB serial
adapter and the built-in serial on my laptop.
After several reboots, I switched to USB powered, then about 98% of
the characters were correct.
Looking at my setup, I noticed that the serial cable I use is a 9pin
to RJ54 <-> RJ54 to 9pin.
I suspect this cable is not correctly grounding the board given that
the board only connects the 3 pins.

If the serial ground isn't connected properly, and the AC adapter
isn't keyed (grounded), it would make sense if the ground floated
a bit and causes serial noise.

Something to verify before sending the board in for RMA. *

* I found this thread and started worrying about having to RMA the
board before I figured out the problem.