[Elecraft] USB to serial angst

[Lu Romero]

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" <lists at subich.com>
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] USB to serial angst
To: "'Eric Manning'" <eric.manning at engr.uvic.ca>,
    <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Message-ID: <CCAC64FC4734458E82B88CFCF1A4382B at 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.