[GreenKeys] USB-to-serial adapters, and baudot

[gil smith]

Hi Les:

I also thought that a usb adapter under XP would be fine for baudot, but I 
tried to run TTYSIM the other day via a usb adapter, and it did not run.  I 
suspect that RTTYArt will have the same issue -- probably relying on direct 
register control of the uart or something.  Will probably be that same 
thing with Heavymetal.  Bummer.  Means you need a pc with a built-in serial 
port, and (most? all?) laptops don't have them anymore.

Note that usb adapters work fine on the PC232 port of TTY-Connect, since it 
uses ascii at 38400-baud.

I have tried two USB-to-serial adapters.

One is a belkin (pda) adapter, with a 1' usb pigtail and a DB9-M on a 
largish plastic pod (about $29 at staples) -- you need a DB9-MtoF straight 
extension cable if you are more than a foot away.  Also, if I put my laptop 
into hibernation and wake back up, the belkin no longer works (needs to be 
un-plugged and re-plugged)

The other adapter is from BAFO and uses a standard usb cable, and a little 
adapter that plugs into the DB9 on the equipment (about $19 at fry's 
outpost.com).  I like the BAFO better since it is cheaper, the usb cable is 
thinner and more flexible, the adapter is smaller, and the throughput seems 
to be almost twice that of the belkin.  I also like the adapter being on 
the equipment's DB9.  If I put my laptop into hibernation and wake back up, 
the BAFO is still working.

Neither of these adapters is as fast as a regular serial port at a modest 
38400-baud for sustained transfers.  They claim to run up to 115K or so, 
but I was surprised how slow they were (in average throughput).  Probably a 
windows thing.  Only downside to the BAFO is the mounting nuts on it -- I 
use nuts on the DB9F side, and jackscrews on the DB9M side.  Two DB9 
connectors with nuts will not connect.  But it is easy to twist the nuts 
off the BAFO with a pair of pliers, and drill through the rubber case to 
install jackscrews.

gil


At 05:42 AM 2/28/2005, Veenstra, Lester wrote:
>Question to the net:   I am trying to get RTTYart to work on a laptop
>running XP and using a USB/Rs232 dangle.    No luck. It appears that the
>UART may be running at a rate much higher than 45.5 baud. Any one have
>results on using the software on an XP machine with USB adapter?
>    Les  K1YCM/3
>
>Lester Veenstra
>Senior Engineering Program Manager
>Intelsat General
>6550 Rock Springs Drive, Suite 450
>Bethesda Maryland, 20817
>+1-301-571-1212
>e-mail: lester.veenstra at intelsatgeneral.com
>
>
>The TD will simply connect to your PC, and you will run Bill Bytheway's
>RTTYArt program to archive tapes to disk files.  Then send a copy of the
>
>files to Bill or George, for uploading to the tape collection on
>rtty.com.



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