USB to Serial

Most new laptop computers have a USB port instead of a RS-232 port. I've been doing some homework on these converters and find some don't do a good job if good control of the handshaking lines are needed. Does anyone have any personal experience with a converter that works well for this use? The data rate is 19.2 Kbps now, but I can see that going to 57.6 Kbps sometime this year. Thanks for any help.

Dennis,

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Reply to
D. Zimmerman
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I looked at 3 and they all worked fine. Specifically, we've used I/O Gear for awhile with no problems.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

If you can, get hold of the FTDI one. I've used a few of them including the Keyspan and Prolific ones and the FTDI was the least hassle by a long chalk.

Chris

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Chris Eilbeck                         mailto:chris@yordas.demon.co.uk
MARS Flight Crew                              http://www.mars.org.uk/
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Chris Eilbeck

I have several Macintoshes, and used Belkin converters at first. They worked well, until Belkin didn't keep up their support for the system

10 software. The latest software was not supported at all, so I shopped around and switched to a converter made by Keyspan (USA-19HS). There's no looking back - it's been great.
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   Jim Nagy
   Elm Electronics
Reply to
Jim Nagy

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:14:28 GMT, "D. Zimmerman" wrote in comp.arch.embedded:

We use ones by I/O Gear at up to 115K baud into ProComm without ever loosing an incoming character. But haven't used with hardware handshake at all.

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Jack Klein
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Jack Klein

"D. Zimmerman" schrieb:

I tested a converter built around the Prolific chip and it did perfectly, including handshake lines.

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Dipl.-Ing. Tilmann Reh
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Tilmann Reh

In article , Jim Nagy writes

We had some PC software problems with Belkin units which always seemed to allocate themselves to exotic COM port numbers. Then the COM port number reported by the driver did not match the port number found by our software.

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Tim Mitchell
Reply to
Tim Mitchell

I've used the Prolific ones with handshaking.

Had tremendous problems, until I inserted a delay in my application software that ensured the buffer would fill at the baud rate. If I didn't control the speed even if the software was set to the correct baud rate, windows would transfer the data to the converter at max speed causing buffer overruns and thereby loss of data

Cheers

Klaus

Reply to
Klaus Vestergaard Kragelund

Thank you all! Someone pointed out something that I should have thought of, a serial PCMCIA card. So we'll look at the USB products suggested and the PC card. Thanks again.

Dennis,

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D. Zimmerman

read the users feedback at:

formatting link

Don...

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Don McKenzie
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Don McKenzie

I'm also looking into adding USB to my design. I would like to try two things:

1) That my embedded system emulates as a Memory stick. So that by plugging in my device, i can copy some files from the filesystem to the PC.

or

2) That my embedded system contains a USB host, so could plug in a memory stick, transfer files to it. My system will be a 8 or 16 bitter, so not to much processing power or OS. Is there a kind of easy to use hardware host on the market?

Talk to you.

Stijn

Reply to
Jon S.

There may be by now, but odds are it's not worth having. It'll cost you more in terms of hardware and power requirements than it's worth, unless your embedded system is already untypically bulky.

USB is designed explicitly under the assumption of powerful host computer controlling simplistic slave devices. The longer you look at it, the more it tends to feel as if USB were part of a hidden plot by Intel meant to ensure that a full-scale PC stays at the center of everybody's "digital home".

I.e. if you don't plan on building most of a PC, or at least a PocketPC, hosting USB is not really an option.

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Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)
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Reply to
Hans-Bernhard Broeker

EEPROM.

COM

then

A

keep

COM4.

I've used a couple different models on my laptop with XP Pro and saw the same port scattering. On XP it is possible to change the assigned port though.

Also, I had the best luck of the two I tried with IOGear but it's $29.95 at Fry's then I found it online, the exact same model for $14.95 though I don't remember how much the shipping costs were.

Reply to
Dilton McGowan II

My Prolific based chip would not do handshaking properly. I tried every driver combination I could find. It worked Ok for data coming in from my Deluo GPS "mouse" but failed to let me program my JKMicro board or program a device at work so I switched to IOGear and bought it at Fry's.

Reply to
Dilton McGowan II

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