To answer the questions:
Electrically, I connected an actual Apple-branded 9-pin to 25-pin (aka "modem") cable to a 25-pin female-to-female adapter to a 25-pin to 9-pin PC cable. No null modem adapter. (I originally made the mistake of trying to use a PC-style RS-232 serial cable instead of the Apple-branded one, but that didn't work, and the instant I added a null modem, the Mac would go into a freakout power cycle loop. Then I looked up and discovered that Apple's RS-422 serial is a different pinout than PC RS-232, and remembered I had the Apple-branded cable that was probably wired the right way.)
Serially, I had to modify the /etc/inittab file to allow serial connections. It seems to be happiest at 9600 baud. I couldn't get it to work at 19200 baud, even though the Mac supports it. (Just got gibberish.)
The Itanium was a 'donation' to my vintage computer collection, I didn't pay a dime for it. (And according to IDC, Itanium sold more, dollar-wise, than Sparc last year, and is very close to Power; and even sold more than Opteron!)
I ran ELinks because it's what Debian includes by default. Not entirely sure what the difference is between that and Lynx. I'll have to try the -vikeys, that should do the trick. (I tried using VI's keys, but it didn't work, so it must need the command line option.)
Electrically, I connected an actual Apple-branded 9-pin to 25-pin (aka "modem") cable to a 25-pin female-to-female adapter to a 25-pin to 9-pin PC cable. No null modem adapter. (I originally made the mistake of trying to use a PC-style RS-232 serial cable instead of the Apple-branded one, but that didn't work, and the instant I added a null modem, the Mac would go into a freakout power cycle loop. Then I looked up and discovered that Apple's RS-422 serial is a different pinout than PC RS-232, and remembered I had the Apple-branded cable that was probably wired the right way.)
Serially, I had to modify the /etc/inittab file to allow serial connections. It seems to be happiest at 9600 baud. I couldn't get it to work at 19200 baud, even though the Mac supports it. (Just got gibberish.)
The Itanium was a 'donation' to my vintage computer collection, I didn't pay a dime for it. (And according to IDC, Itanium sold more, dollar-wise, than Sparc last year, and is very close to Power; and even sold more than Opteron!)
I ran ELinks because it's what Debian includes by default. Not entirely sure what the difference is between that and Lynx. I'll have to try the -vikeys, that should do the trick. (I tried using VI's keys, but it didn't work, so it must need the command line option.)