[Elecraft] Need more than one serial port?

[chen dave]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Paul <paul.reiter at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I am working on the BESCOTP award--the Bought Every Single Cable On The
> Planet award...
>
> The DB-9 serial port on the back of the K-3 here has a special cable
> running to the Steppir antenna controller. Now I need to access the same
> port from the computer for another application, mainly my contest
> logger/keying. I have a Micro Keyer and my old cable for it was for a Icom
> Pro II. I have to buy a new one for the K-3, but it is $85 ! I'd go ahead
> and do it, but I'm not sure how to hook all this up!
>
> So, how are you contesters out there doing that? Is there a Y cable made
> for DB-9? If so, wouldn't that pin out be different than the one for the
> SteppIR and cause problems?
>
> A secondary problem is that the computer only has USB ports, no serial
> port. It's an IBM Thinkpad. I believe it has 4 USB 2.0 ports available.
>
> Any info would help!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul
> WY7I
>
>
As everyone knows, some USB to serial adapter is OK, but others are very
poor. My suggestion is try to buy a PCMCIA to RS232 card, it is much better
than a USB to serial.

By the way there a tranditional RS232 on your thinkpad main board, but you
need several wires ...

73 de ba4rf/David