Power & Source of Big Ideas

I found that the cable i was using had some issues. Swapped it out and got a little further..? to the point of just getting garbage output. on every UART one could think of to try. screen /dev/cu.usbserial-1440 1500000 screen /dev/cu.usbserial-1440 115200 1500000, 115200, 57600, 38400, 19200 ,9600, ...
Trying to make use of the USB-C : onboard USB to Debug UART converter, 1500000bps bauds.

When I plug it into a MacBook Pro... nothing seems to be recognized. I'm looking in /dev/* (tty, cu, etc)

Running the standard latest friendlywrt build. Any tricks to this? something I need to enable?