I have managed to get a working connection between a Macintosh and the Novag Citrine. At the moment, most interaction is done manually.
For the physical connection, I have a Keyspan serial/USB adaptor model USA-19QW connected on the USB side to a USB port on the Mac and on the serial side connected to the DB-9 serial connector that came with the Citrine.
(Kudos to Keyspan for building an adapter that still works fine after nearly seven years of use. And even more kudos for continuing to provide timely and free driver software upgrades for both Mac and Windows platforms. If you need a serial/USB adapter, then these are the guys that you want.)
On the Mac side (also Unix/Linux), the manual command for initiating a connection is:
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cu -l /dev/cu.KeySerial1 -s 57600 -h
Once the Mac side is running, the Citrine is powered up (or reset). At this point it may take a couple of inputs to the cu program to get things running. The "I" (identification request) command is useful here. With my Citrine, the "I" command produces:
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ID. UCBII V1.09
The protocol doesn't use SAN or FEN and is a bit inconsistent with its coordinate algebraic with most moves in the "e2-e4" / "d5xe4" format but with castling using O-O or O-O-O.
Board display:
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Position Board
. aa bb cc dd ee ff gg hh
.8 br bn bb bq bk bb bn br 8
.7 bp bp bp bp bp bp bp bp 7
.6 :: :: :: :: 6
.5 :: :: :: :: 5
.4 :: :: :: :: 4
.3 :: :: :: :: 3
.2 WP WP WP WP WP WP WP WP 2
.1 WR WN WB WQ WK WB WN WR 1+
. aa bb cc dd ee ff gg hh
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M 1 e2-e4
M 1, c7-c6
M 2 d2-d4
M 2, d7-d5
M 3 e4xd5
M 3, c6xd5
M 4 c2-c4
M 4, g8-f6
M 5 b1-c3
M 5, e7-e6
M 6 g1-f3
M 6, f8-e7
M 7 c4xd5
M 7, f6xd5
M 8 f1-d3
M 8, b8-c6
M 9 O-O
M 9, O-O
M 10 f1-e1
M 10, e7-f6