+@item @emph{Start with power to your target board turned off},
+and nothing connected to your JTAG adapter.
+If you're particularly paranoid, unplug power to the board.
+It's important to have the ground signal properly set up,
+unless you are using a JTAG adapter which provides
+galvanic isolation between the target board and the
+debugging host.
+
+@item @emph{Be sure it's the right kind of JTAG connector.}
+If your dongle has a 20-pin ARM connector, you need some kind
+of adapter (or octopus, see below) to hook it up to
+boards using 14-pin or 10-pin connectors ... or to 20-pin
+connectors which don't use ARM's pinout.
+
+In the same vein, make sure the voltage levels are compatible.
+Not all JTAG adapters have the level shifters needed to work
+with 1.2 Volt boards.
+
+@item @emph{Be certain the cable is properly oriented} or you might
+damage your board. In most cases there are only two possible
+ways to connect the cable.
+Connect the JTAG cable from your adapter to the board.
+Be sure it's firmly connected.
+
+In the best case, the connector is keyed to physically
+prevent you from inserting it wrong.
+This is most often done using a slot on the board's male connector
+housing, which must match a key on the JTAG cable's female connector.
+If there's no housing, then you must look carefully and
+make sure pin 1 on the cable hooks up to pin 1 on the board.
+Ribbon cables are frequently all grey except for a wire on one
+edge, which is red. The red wire is pin 1.
+
+Sometimes dongles provide cables where one end is an ``octopus'' of
+color coded single-wire connectors, instead of a connector block.
+These are great when converting from one JTAG pinout to another,
+but are tedious to set up.
+Use these with connector pinout diagrams to help you match up the
+adapter signals to the right board pins.
+
+@item @emph{Connect the adapter's other end} once the JTAG cable is connected.
+A USB, parallel, or serial port connector will go to the host which
+you are using to run OpenOCD.
+For Ethernet, consult the documentation and your network administrator.
+
+For USB based JTAG adapters you have an easy sanity check at this point:
+does the host operating system see the JTAG adapter?
+
+@item @emph{Connect the adapter's power supply, if needed.}
+This step is primarily for non-USB adapters,
+but sometimes USB adapters need extra power.
+
+@item @emph{Power up the target board.}
+Unless you just let the magic smoke escape,
+you're now ready to set up the OpenOCD server
+so you can use JTAG to work with that board.
+