[GreenKeys] Support for serial ports

[Chris Elmquist]

On Wednesday (06/15/2011 at 04:42PM -0500), Randy and Sherry Guttery wrote:
> On 6/15/2011 4:00 PM, Chris Elmquist wrote:
> >I took a slightly different approach to this problem--  which was to put
> >a small microcontroller (Atmel ATTiny2313) between the upstream serial
> >port and the TTY.
> >
> >
> An elegant solution for sure - but come on Chris, not everyone has
> your talents and skill at making such...  While the CP2102EK does
> require some minor programing (it comes with the program and docs to
> do so) - it requires no hardware assembly nor programming skills...
> 
> just my .02...

I didn't mean to imply that this was _THE_ solution... just another.

_My_ experience with USB to serial converters has been poor.  Unless you
build your own board with one on it, and choose the chip yourself,
you will probably be playing roulette with which device you actually
end up with inside an over-the-counter dongle.  That process for me has
been non-deterministic.

Device driver support for them is also chaotic...  with random behavior
appearing for things like flow control, speed selection, buffer
management, etc.

So, I chose to solve the problem in a different part of the chain...
and I also wanted to connect to legacy serial ports on things like
terminal servers and old mini-computers where there is no place to plug
a USB to serial converter.

Chris N0JCF

-- 
Chris Elmquist