USB to serial cable advice

[Mudsculpter]

I want to get a couple of inexpensive ones but I don't want to buy junk. Does it matter whether the cable is fully 2.0 compliant? I have seen some cheap onesthat are only 1.1. Any advice?

[FireGod]

I have spent the extra money and bought Keyspan from CompUSA. I have some others but the Keyspan has software that allows you to assign it to a geographical USB port as if it were a com port.

I would guess they are all fast enought for our stuff.

[stempile]

I bought this off of e-bay. It DOES NOT WORK!!! At least not with my Mac. I do use a parallax brand USBtoSerial that works great with my Mac.

Don't Buy This! (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300150879904) Seems to be to slow to support Renard, only about 1/2 of the commands make it to the controller.


This does work well!! (http://www.parallax.com/html_pages/products/shop/usbspecial.asp) It came with my Boe-Bot robot kit.

ms

[DynamoBen]

The parallax one is nice. I've also used stuff from DLP Design.

http://www.dlpdesign.com/usb/us232bcable.shtml

[Mudsculpter]

Well When I posted this question I had already ordered this Usb to Serial cable.

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-to-RS232-Serial-9-Pin-Cable-Adapter-DB9-USA-Ship_W0QQitemZ180171063548QQihZ008QQcategoryZ64047 QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

After stempile bashed one similar to it I thought I had some trash on the way to me.

But I have XP pro and thought it MIGHT work.

It does seem to work. After installing the drivers from the teeny cd that comes with it I ran four channels without a problem. I'll cross my fingers and see how it responds with 64 channel signals running through it.

[stempile]

Glad you had better luck. That tiny cd was interesting... it didn't come in a cd jacket.

I was running it though my mac (BTW that little cd won't go into it) with Windows XP home running on VM ware.

Keep me posted if it works on the Windows PC only. I will have to try that setup.

ms

[xmus]

Just for the record, i've purchased two off of ebay, real cheap, and they worked for windows XP just fine.

What i found really interesting, is that they are able to do off-spec baud rates.... so for example, they could do 60KBPS, or 80KBPS. A normal PC serial port can only do the in-spec rates, 1200, 2400, etc etc. 19.2KBPS, 38.4KBPS, 57.6KBPS (Etc).

So when i was experimenting, i was trying to find some off-spec faster baud rates that these could support, that would work with the internal oscillator of the pic (for Renard).

[MarkL]

Well When I posted this question I had already ordered this Usb to Serial cable.

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-to-RS232-Serial-9-Pin-Cable-Adapter-DB9-USA-Ship_W0QQitemZ180171063548QQihZ008QQcategoryZ64047 QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

That's the one I bought, and just gave it a try this weekend. After spending a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what had to be installed from that little CD (God forbid they slap a README file or something on there) it appears to be working fine with a Ren64.

Edit: I'm running XP, not Vista.

Mark

[deplanche]

All the links to the ebay pages are outdated. Do you guys have any more info that might be able to help with what you have that works and what doesn't? I just got one off e-bay that came with one of those mini-CDs. I can't get it to install on XP at all. the driver is a PL 2303, but there is no name brand on the package at all... and of course, no readme file.

[Keith R]

Mine came from Fry's. The brand is Cables Unlimited. It is a USB 2.0 and cost 20.00. Works fine with XP. You will find it here.
http://www.cablesunlimited.com/products/Prod_Individual3.aspx?groupcode=I3274

[deplanche]

I finally got the USB-to-Serial connection to work. Turned out the adaprter I was using was defelctive. Tried for about 2 hours downloading and installing drivers, and nothing ever worked. Luckily I ordered two, so tried the second one on a laptop running the same software, and installed in 30 seconds. So tried that on PC, and also worked. Tried first one again, and nothing on either. Sending that one back today. Hopefully will get something decent this time.

[TERBObob]

Hope this isn't off topic , but , was wondering , are you guys using these to simply add another serial port ?

[Michael]

There is a limit to how many channels you can run off a serial port for the Renard protocal. Some people also like to have several ports so they can run a branch say to the left side of the house, right side, and roof. Other people do not have computers with a real RS232 serial port and must use these. I am following this, because I need to pick up 2 for future expansion.

- Michael

[deplanche]

The computer and laptop I use most of the time does not have any serial or parallel ports, so I can't use anything without these adapters. I figured these were better than an expansion card because I can move between computers.

Plus, can now plug in my Garmin GPS. :)

[BuzzKill]

The ATEN UC-232A is the one to get. ($22-$35 on the web) You will see it rebranded for I/O Gear and others. You can often tell from the name. It will have 232A or U232 or some derivative in the part name.

http://www.aten.com/products/productItem.php?pcid=20050107104554001&psid=20050117102915002&pid=2005022316346005

They also have a new USB to 4 port serial adapter which I found online for about $70. So if you have multiple renards to run, that may be the ticket.

[Wayne J]

I use the one from Radio Shack, Model: 26-183 (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2036258&cp=&sr=1&origkw=usb+to+serial&kw=usb+to+serial&parentPage=search)
It works great, and I have had zero issues with it. I use it on 3 different PC's. I will have it with me at the Philly mini this weekend.