Nvidia Jetson TK1 - Serial Console to the rescue

Today I was attempting to turn my TK1 into a wifi access point.  In the process I bunged up the eth0 interface and networking stopped working after a reboot.

After a mad scramble and a post to a Forum I realized I could access the computer via it's serial console.

Then another mad scramble to find my null-modem serial cable, and an adapter, and remember I had hard coded the serial port to 4800b for something else I use here.  

After I setup windows to use 115200/8/N/1 and attached the null modem serial cable and related adapters to get the connection to the hardware I used trusty SecureCRT to connect to the serial port via com4 and wa lah I saw the TK1 terminal booting after a reset.

THANK GOD For OLD SCHOOL knowledge!

I first used serial ports and null modem cables back in the late 80's and all that knowledge was still stuffed away in my aging brain!  

Also thankfully the hardware developers of the TK1 thought enough to add a Serial Port DB9 connection on the board! (rare these days!).

Anyway crisis averted.  I'd had visions of re-flashing the rootfs and redoing everything I've done for the past month until this serial port came into view.

Whew....