All: Not to again beat this thread to death, but I am always amazed at all the "angst" folks here seem to experience with USB to Serial adaptors. All you have to do is do some homework...
One of my jobs at work is to be responsible for electronic systems in our traveling museum displays. We also have "trinket stores" that go along with these exhibitions. In the museum and in the attached stores there are quite a few ancient serial devices like industrial video playout boxes, GPI (General Purpose Interface) switching for lights, doors and audio in our theaters, POS (Point of Sales) barcode scanners and serial programming interfaces to "show control system controllers" just to name a few applications. We operate in the neighborhood of 35-45 computers for various applications in each traveling exhibit (there are now three). The original design of these venues predated me and unfortunately, Im stuck with maintaining it and, as usual, there is no money for technology redesign. When it came time to replace computers, I am hard pressed to find any that have multiple serial ports. So I had to find reliable USB to serial converters. I did some research and tried a myriad of manufacturers. >From Belkin to Radio shack to B&B Engineering, Some worked, some did not. I have found one unit which, to date, has handled EVERYTHING I have thrown at it with total reliability at a very attractive price. It can be found here: http://www.saelig.com/USAC/U050.htm This $19 USD converter has never failed to run any of our serial devices in the museum. Also, I have three of them at home (I only use one actively now) and they work perfectly in my shack. They have driven the CAT for a Kenwood TS850S with a CT232 serial to TTL converter, a Kenwood TS570D directly, an Icom IC756Pro2 via a homebrew CI-V adaptor, an Icom 746 with a W1CEE CI-V adaptor, and an Icom IC7700 via a genuine Icom CI-V nterface. I have also controlled a M2 2800 antenna rotor via its serial control port as well as using it to directly key RTTY and CW Up to about 45wpm, then it gets a bit shaky) with some transistor switches. This converter features "full modem control signals & data signal" support and has nifty little red LED's you can look at through a clear port in the shell to visually make sure the port is working. These handy devices are based on FTDI chips, and you can download the drivers from the FTDI website. The USB-COM-S supports Windows 98, ME, CE, 2000, XP, Apple MAC OS8 or higher, Linux 2.4.0 and later, OpenBSD 2.9 and later & FreeBSD 4.7 and later. There is not a serial device that I have thrown at this thing that it has not been able to handle. All of the ones I have purchased over the past 3 years are all working with no down time. Since I have been using this thing, I have no more USB angst, at home or at work. I have no personal connection to Saelig Company, just a satisfied user. I do not want a USB interface in my radios. I am holding out for Ethernet control, but am unwilling to trust my operating time to TenTec software. Lu Romero - W4LT ----------------------- Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:35:45 -0400 From: "Joe Subich, W4TV" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] USB to serial angst To: "'Eric Manning'" <[email protected]>, <[email protected]> Message-ID: <ccac64fc4734458e82b88cfcf1a43...@laptop> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Well, without calling anything names ... > > Placing a USB port in the K3 would simply move the USB UART > > currently found in the USB to serial converter onto the KIO3 > board. > > Correct, and would thus avoid the un-necessary and > superfluous packaging > and connector costs of the USB/RS232 dongle. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
