[Elecraft] USB "adapter" for K3...

[Mike]

John,
There is nothing special about the adapter Elecraft sells. It may be 
convenient to do one-stop shopping. The most widely "approved" adapters 
(judging by comments here and on some other discussions) use the FTDI 
chipset. I have adapters from at least 2 manufacturers and they both 
work flawlessly. Where you may run onto trouble is if you use them to 
connect to an FSK RTTY interface. Not a problem with th K3, cuz of AFSK 
is so easy to hook up.

No adapter has a pre-assigned port number. Windows assigns those, and 
you can change it (in Control Panel) to anyone you like.
If you're using Windows XP and above, you probably won't even have to 
load a driver. YMMV.

To any software looking at the port, it's just a serial port. You tell 
the software what port to use. Note that if you un-plug the adapter and 
plug it back in later, the com port number MAY change.

Yes, it can be used for CAT control.

73, Mike NF4L

John Ragle wrote:
> Does anyone know the nature of the K3 USB -> COMM adapter sold by 
> Elecraft? I cannot find anything in the Elecraft literature about it 
> (other than the price, of course). For example:
>
> Does it come with a pre-defined COMM port number?
> A settable COMM port number between 1 and 10?
> A settable COMM port number which may be anything (e.g. 17 or 25 or...).
>
> How do driver software programs/suites such as DigiPan, FLDIGI, HRDeluxe 
> recognize this adapter (if at all)? [Some software will not recognize 
> ports above 10, while other programs are more relaxed about such things.]
>
> Can the adapter be used for CAT control?
>
> Any information would be useful.
>
> John Ragle -- W1ZI
>
> P.S. Grumbling about the fact that RS-232 is still being used when long 
> obsolete...grumble grumble grumble...USB-2.0 on a chip...etc.
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