> -----Original Message-----
>
> OK - I'll try again to answer. There are 36 posts in this thread so
> far, so I don't know which ones you're quoting. And most posts contain
> all the previous posts, so reading through them is pretty inefficient
> for me.
I was waiting for this to happen, and I hate it when I'm right. Tom/Thomas,
I'm relatively new to the M100 community and this mailing list (although I
think it's been two years now, I still remember when I was a clueless newbie),
and I can tell you that the folks here *are* trying to help you. Some of the
answers have assumed a knowledge/familiarity level with RS-232 serial
connections that you don't have, and some have got bogged down in terminology
(which, again, you're not familiar with yet). Please don't give up. It'll
take a bit of time to become familiar with some of the aspects of older
technology if you didn't grow up with them as some of us did. You've got a
working connection and I honestly don't think you need to be concerned at all
about the display dimming. Your chain of adapters works, and while a nice
cable or a stack of mini-adapters would be nice, it's not necessary.
I'd be willing to bet that what you have would even work with a TPDD emulator
program if/when you are ready to move beyond simple text file transfers. I
started out just transferring files as text and moved on to different methods
as I felt comfortable. Now I can see how much better things work with a DOS
and a TPDD emulator but when I started out it was a bit more than I could
handle. Don't worry about that for now.
A few comments (see below) that might help straighten out some of the
terminology:
> Because my usb/serial adapter is exactly that - a single unit with a usb
> connector on one end, and a DB9 on the other. It's not an adapter -
> it's a cable.
So here's the tricky bit - it's actually an adapter. Not in the sense of
'adapting' male to female or re-mapping signal pins, but in the sense of taking
the modern-day place of the old PCI or ISA serial adapter cards we used to use
in a PC. Inside the DB9 connector shell is a small printed circuit board with
a chip and a few components on it which implement the serial interface and
communicate with the PC operating system over USB which is the general-purpose
bus that would have been a PCI or ISA slot with the old adapter cards. It's an
active piece of hardware and that's why people are referring to it as an
'adapter' because it's a piece of computer hardware much like a network adapter
or video adapter would be.
That's where the 'Prolific' chip being discussed earlier comes into play - it's
one of the brands of chip which serial adapters like this use, and it's on the
circuit board buried inside the DB9 connector of your USB serial adapter.
Other USB serial adapters use an FTDI brand chip, which is more robust and has
better drivers, and some people have had better success with them, but if yours
is working for you right now, I wouldn't worry about it.
> you make me feel like a school boy being reprimanded.
I'll say this as politely as I can, and I hope Brian can take it as
constructive criticism rather than an insult or attack, because it's not meant
that way. Brian is trying to help, but you aren't alone - I also read his
message as having a very chiding or reprimanding tone. I understand what he's
trying to say (details are important) but I do agree that his email to you went
over the top with regard to respecting you as an adult. Just because you don't
know yet that DB25 vs DB9 is an important detail, or that your USB serial cable
is actually something everyone else on the list would consider an adapter, is
no reason to give you heck for not getting those details right. Brian, I
wouldn't point this out if this was the first time I've seen you get peevish on
this list, so I really hope you'll take what I'm saying to heart and think
about ways to try to keep the tone constructive here. (I hope I'm not out of
line, but I feel this needed to be said.)
jim
