topic Re: Terra Term / Putty alternative for Mac in LPC Microcontrollers

Terra Term / Putty alternative for Mac

tk007b — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 08:57:22 GMT

Hi,

I have a LPC845-BRK Microprocessor and am trying to use it for the first time. I can download all the software, SDK and example data but do not know of a suitable alternative for Terra Term or Putty that will work on a Mac (running Big Sur)

Can anyone advise ?

Thanks in advance

Re: Terra Term / Putty alternative for Mac

Alice_Yang — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 04:09:06 GMT

Hello,

Do you use MCUXpresso IDE, if yes, you can use "Terminal View" of IDE.

Detail please refer to MCUXpresso IDE User Guide-> 19.8 Using Terminal View for UART communication with target.

https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/user-guide/MCUXpresso_IDE_User_Guide.pdf

Alice

Re: Terra Term / Putty alternative for Mac

tk007b — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 09:39:22 GMT

Perfect!,

Thanks Alice. I wonder why the instructions mention terra term / putty then ?

Anyway, I will use the terminal window and go from there.

Thank you for your speedy reply and assistance

Kind regards

Re: Terra Term / Putty alternative for Mac

tk007b — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:24:03 GMT

Hi there,

Using my Mac, i've managed to get a terminal window on MCUXpressoIDE (Shift+CTRL+ALT+ T) but when I select the serial port drop down I do not see the LPC845-BRK's port available (the lpc845 is switched on and plugged in). See pic below ..

As a result I cannot see any output to any code I use (Hello World, for example).

Many thanks, again

** AMENDMENT ** - The LPC845-BRK serial port appears as the 2nd option (the usbmodem) from the picture above.

All sorted

Re: Terra Term / Putty alternative for Mac

mabayden — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 17:01:30 GMT

Hey, yeah, PuTTY and Terra Term come up a lot since they’re common on Windows, but on Mac, there are actually some decent options too.

If you're sticking with serial stuff, the terminal inside MCUXpresso IDE works fine, but a few others are worth checking out:

CoolTerm is simple and does the job
Serial.app is a bit more polished (though it’s paid)
iTerm2 with something like screen or minicom is solid if you're comfortable in the terminal
Attune is great if you’re doing more complex scripting or automating things across machines
Termius is pretty user-friendly and works across platforms
Zoc is another powerful one (also paid, but has a lot packed in)

Totally depends on what you’re trying to do — simple serial vs full-on automation. Sounds like you’ve got things working now with MCUXpresso, though, which is great.

Hope this helps if you want to try something else later.