USB to RS-232 Serial Adapter Advice

It's probably worth trying to use the LXe software to connect. It is
shipped with the Colibri and may be more flexible in the ports it can use.



"I used a Belkin adapter with mixed results with the Colibri. One of the
things to look at is the port that it gets assigned to. The
Belkin would get assigned comm port 3 or 4 and SeeYou would only let you
have options of =A00 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. SeeYou would
allow more port options. =A0I could hard reassign the ports and make it
work."

On Feb 23, 4:45*pm, Big Wings wrote:
It's probably worth trying to use the LXe software to connect. *It is
shipped with the Colibri and may be more flexible in the ports it can use..


"I used a Belkin adapter with mixed results with the Colibri. One of the
things to look at is the port that it gets assigned to. The
Belkin would get assigned comm port 3 or 4 and SeeYou would only let you
have options of =A00 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. SeeYou would
allow more port options. =A0I could hard reassign the ports and make it
work."

I've had the same trouble with my Volkslogger. I got a docking
station for my laptop that has a serial port and has worked fine. I
do wish I had an adapter that worked. Any suggestions?

Dan Rihn
WO

On Feb 23, 10:37*pm, Dan wrote:
On Feb 23, 4:45*pm, Big Wings wrote:

It's probably worth trying to use the LXe software to connect. *It is
shipped with the Colibri and may be more flexible in the ports it can use.


"I used a Belkin adapter with mixed results with the Colibri. One of the
things to look at is the port that it gets assigned to. The
Belkin would get assigned comm port 3 or 4 and SeeYou would only let you
have options of =A00 and 1 so would not recognise the unit. SeeYou would
allow more port options. =A0I could hard reassign the ports and make it
work."

I've had the same trouble with my Volkslogger. *I got a docking
station for my laptop that has a serial port and has worked fine. *I
do wish I had an adapter that worked. *Any suggestions?

Dan Rihn
WO

I don't own or regularly use any of the electronic instruments, so I
can't speak from direct soaring experience, but I use the Keyspan
KS-19a with Apple and Wintel laptops for programming microcontrollers
(Atmel AVR via STK500 or AVRISP, if anyone's counting). I switched to
this unit from a Belkin on the advice of some folks in the DIY
electronics community, and I'm very satisfied. I've even made it work
with a few Windows apps emulated through WINE on my Macbook. Through
WINE, I can just assign it to COM1. Not sure what the situation is
like on Windows, but I bet there's some Device Manager trickery to do
the same.

Ryan Spicer

Hi Paul, I had trouble with easily-found USB-to-Serial interface
cables from Circuit City and BestBuy, trying to connect from a PC
laptop to my Volkslogger (a finicky piece of equipment), using
StrePla. One problem was Microsoft ActiveSynch, which does funny
things (I'm a techno-bozo and that's as good as the description
gets). If I disabled ActiveSynch, things generally went better (and
better yet when I was trying to load my IPAQ 3955 with Pocket StrePla,
but that's another thread).

The best serial adapter I've used is found at
http://www.pfranc.com/cgi-bin/P/USB_...min-GPS-cables ; they also
make a bunch of different Garmin plugs for cabling. They have worked
for me, and several friends. I recommend them - I have no financial
interest (I'd like them to be around for a long time). They make 4
inch and 6 foot ones (handy to put laptop on wing if downloading from
the glider). On one laptop, I had to re-install drivers (available
from the same site at http://www.pfranc.com/usb/usb.shtml#drivers)
before it worked.

You might want to search on your drivers, and update them - outside
chance it'd work. You might want to become a Pfranc too!

Dan

I talked with Larry Berg at Pfranc in October 2008 about buying his
USB to serial converter. Unfortunately, he no longer sells them. He
was unhappy because the manufacturer wouldn't support the drivers, and
didn't want his name associated with them anymore. He recommended any
adapter with the Prolific PC2303 or higher chip set, as long as it had
current XP or Vista drivers (he said that the drivers are the primary
source of trouble).

-John

=======

On Feb 24, 12:54 pm, wrote:
Hi Paul, I had trouble with easily-found USB-to-Serial interface
cables from Circuit City and BestBuy, trying to connect from a PC
laptop to my Volkslogger (a finicky piece of equipment), using
StrePla. One problem was Microsoft ActiveSynch, which does funny
things (I'm a techno-bozo and that's as good as the description
gets). If I disabled ActiveSynch, things generally went better (and
better yet when I was trying to load my IPAQ 3955 with Pocket StrePla,
but that's another thread).

The best serial adapter I've used is found athttp://www.pfranc.com/cgi-bin/P/USB_G4/garmin-GPS-cables; they also
make a bunch of different Garmin plugs for cabling. They have worked
for me, and several friends. I recommend them - I have no financial
interest (I'd like them to be around for a long time). They make 4
inch and 6 foot ones (handy to put laptop on wing if downloading from
the glider). On one laptop, I had to re-install drivers (available
from the same site athttp://www.pfranc.com/usb/usb.shtml#drivers)
before it worked.

You might want to search on your drivers, and update them - outside
chance it'd work. You might want to become a Pfranc too!

Dan

On Feb 24, 11:10*am, jcarlyle wrote:
I talked with Larry Berg at Pfranc in October 2008 about buying his
USB to serial converter. Unfortunately, he no longer sells them. He
was unhappy because the manufacturer wouldn't support the drivers, and
didn't want his name associated with them anymore. He recommended any
adapter with the Prolific PC2303 or higher chip set, as long as it had
current XP or Vista drivers (he said that the drivers are the primary
source of trouble).

-John

One trick is to install the latest Prolific drivers if your converter
is a generic type. I have a generic converter from Best Buy. It
works fine with SeeYou and CAI but I could not get LXe to work with it
even after installing the latest drivers from the converter
manufacturer. I finally determined that it was using the Prolific
chip set so I installed the latest drivers from Prolific and the
converter began to work properly with LXe.

Aren't there any other mac whackers out there besides me?

On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:21:24 -0800, carbonprop wrote:

On Feb 24, 11:10Â*am, jcarlyle wrote:
I talked with Larry Berg at Pfranc in October 2008 about buying his USB
to serial converter. Unfortunately, he no longer sells them. He was
unhappy because the manufacturer wouldn't support the drivers, and
didn't want his name associated with them anymore. He recommended any
adapter with the Prolific PC2303 or higher chip set, as long as it had
current XP or Vista drivers (he said that the drivers are the primary
source of trouble).

-John

One trick is to install the latest Prolific drivers if your converter is
a generic type. I have a generic converter from Best Buy. It works
fine with SeeYou and CAI but I could not get LXe to work with it even
after installing the latest drivers from the converter manufacturer. I
finally determined that it was using the Prolific chip set so I
installed the latest drivers from Prolific and the converter began to
work properly with LXe.

Aren't there any other mac whackers out there besides me?

I bought a pfranc converter in 2004 because the laptop I had then had a
working USB socket but a dead serial port. I needed a serial connection
at the time. Since then its worked whenever needed, including for hotsync
into an iPAQ 3830.

However, I must admit that I use it with Linux where it 'just works', no
drivers needed.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

I sell a USB to serial converter with 30 days money back guarantee if it
does not work for you, but only in Continental Europe
http://www.trautenberg.net/usb_index.htm

nimbus schrieb:
My portable PC (VAIO) runs on Vista.

I bought a USB-RS232 cable (unknown trademark , manufactured in
China), installed the driver ...and was not able to connect the Zander
GP941 logger.

Anyone with a reference for a cable that is working fine in this
configuration?

Regards,
Bruno

Some Pfrancs still sell these converters and the driver support by MCT
got back to the old good level.

Hans
Pfranc of Germany

jcarlyle schrieb:
I talked with Larry Berg at Pfranc in October 2008 about buying his
USB to serial converter. Unfortunately, he no longer sells them. He
was unhappy because the manufacturer wouldn't support the drivers, and
didn't want his name associated with them anymore. He recommended any
adapter with the Prolific PC2303 or higher chip set, as long as it had
current XP or Vista drivers (he said that the drivers are the primary
source of trouble).

-John

Indeed. I have a Prolific PC2303 USB-232 cable delivered with a
installation CD.
The installation CD contains a VISTA driver. After Installation, I
can't connect my portable PC to the GP940 logger. I tired to install
several other drivers but without success.

Hopefully, I still have an old PC running XP with a serial connector.