Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil
--


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On Sat, 08 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100, thescullster wrote:

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress, his
current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to provide
the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

I have been through this (and with a Prolific one!)

I was recommended US Converters. I only bought one, but it has been
flawless. It just works.


--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster
wrote:

Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil

I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my
Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are
loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50

This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that rubbish
was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker
giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work.

So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by
www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine.

Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about
this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed
their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I
found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver.

Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version
3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.
--
Dave W

Dave W wrote:
On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster
wrote:

Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil

I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my
Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are
loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50

This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that rubbish
was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker
giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work.

So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by
www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine.

Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about
this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed
their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I
found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver.

Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version
3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.

You want your adapter vendor to tell you who makes
the chip inside it.

Example from one page on usconverters:

"The processor chip in this adapter is the FT232RL from FTDI Semiconductors"

That should be OK.

FTDI was the company that released a driver which *trashed*
a Chinese forgery. They did not get good P.R. from this "effort".

Everyone loves to get a bargain off Ebay, but not
everything there is going to be fit for purpose.

Chips (not an exhaustive list)

FTDI (worked here)
Prolific (worked here)
Silicon Labs (meh, better but still not perfect)

And I'm not even a "collector" of these stupid things.

I discovered, on my four year old motherboard, that
after I bought a Prolific, that the motherboard actually
*had* RS232. It wasn't on the back panel of the computer.
There was a 2x5 header, with a "pattern not the same
as the USB2 headers". And when I cracked open the manual
and had a look, that turned out to be an RS232. The
motherboard didn't come with a cable, so I had to make
one of my own! That interface today, is ttyS0 when I'm
debugging Linux on the box, amongst other things.
When Linux is almost totally dead, that port
still works :-/ I can lose keyboard and mouse on
Linux (DBUS dead), lose screen (Nouveau loses comms
with NVidia video card), and the RS232 keeps chugging
along just fine.

*******

If you don't know how to set the baud rate with the
MSDOS command to do that, you can always try Putty
and set the rate there. And then, once you drop
the successful Putty session, start using some
utility for doing actual programming.

Garbage can show up on a serial port for two reasons:

1) Baud rate mismatch. Hardwares for which the baud
rate generator is a kludge, even a nominal 19200
might fail to work. That was a problem decades ago.
There were large baud rate errors back then, and no
clever clockgens to speak of.

Always read the docs and use the "default" rate on
your first try. While some kit has autobaud on its
end, exactly how it works may not be documented.
My GPS for example, I think it's 4800 by default or so.

2) Flow control issue at high rates.
RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, none
Using the lower baud rates, can help with gear
that will accept 4800 or 9600 operation. For
more than that, you need something else. For
a four wire cable, you can try XON/XOFF (not
perfect, but better than nothing). RTS/CTS would
involve wires on a nine wire cable (nine wires being
a typical design choice on PCs today). Dialup modems
used to come with 25 pins on their end, just to annoy.

Paul

Dave W wrote:

So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by
www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine.

I note the USconverters uses FTDI chips (beware of products containing
fakes) I have two "premium" converters bought direct from FTDI and
they've been fine

https://www.ftdichip.com/Products/Cables/USBRS232.htm

On Sunday, 9 August 2020 06:02:33 UTC+1, Andy Burns wrote:
Dave W wrote:

So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by
www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine.

I note the USconverters uses FTDI chips (beware of products containing
fakes) I have two "premium" converters bought direct from FTDI and
they've been fine

https://www.ftdichip.com/Products/Cables/USBRS232.htm

I have had good results with this:
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07TXVRQ7V

DSD TECH SH-U09C2 USB to TTL Adapter Built-in FTDI FT232RL IC
for Debugging and Programming.

It lets you select the i/o voltage between 1.8V, 3.3V and 5V and
has various control signals available.

There are some variants of the product from the same company with
slightly different combinations of features, so look carefully.

John

On a desktop pc, I eventually gave up and shoved in an old serial card and
Windoze loaded a drive and it works. The issue seems to be that these
adaptors do not implement handshaking properly. Thus data can be lost if
there is no buffer.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"thescullster" wrote in message
...
Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil
--


----Android NewsGroup Reader----
http://usenet.sinaapp.com/

It probably contains a proper Uart chip with buffer registers. Many of the
Chinese ones don't as they are just not meant to connect to modems etc,
which need flow control to work.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 08 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100, thescullster wrote:

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress, his
current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to provide
the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

I have been through this (and with a Prolific one!)

I was recommended US Converters. I only bought one, but it has been
flawless. It just works.


--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

Yes I have a radio receiver with a 25way rs 232, Still not sure why, since
USB was well established even then.

I go back to the old 8 bit machines like Sinclair, where he cludged the
rs232 to work with printers fine, but due to being driven by software, if
the processor had a halt command then incoming data was thrown away, as a
correctly designed Uart would keep on going storing the missing bytes for
long enough to not lose data. Sinclair just made his out of spare gates in a
logic array grin.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Paul" wrote in message
...
Dave W wrote:
On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster
wrote:

Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil

I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my
Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are
loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50

This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that rubbish
was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker
giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work.

So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by
www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine.

Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about
this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed
their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I
found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver.

Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version
3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.

You want your adapter vendor to tell you who makes
the chip inside it.

Example from one page on usconverters:

"The processor chip in this adapter is the FT232RL from FTDI
Semiconductors"

That should be OK.

FTDI was the company that released a driver which *trashed*
a Chinese forgery. They did not get good P.R. from this "effort".

Everyone loves to get a bargain off Ebay, but not
everything there is going to be fit for purpose.

Chips (not an exhaustive list)

FTDI (worked here)
Prolific (worked here)
Silicon Labs (meh, better but still not perfect)

And I'm not even a "collector" of these stupid things.

I discovered, on my four year old motherboard, that
after I bought a Prolific, that the motherboard actually
*had* RS232. It wasn't on the back panel of the computer.
There was a 2x5 header, with a "pattern not the same
as the USB2 headers". And when I cracked open the manual
and had a look, that turned out to be an RS232. The
motherboard didn't come with a cable, so I had to make
one of my own! That interface today, is ttyS0 when I'm
debugging Linux on the box, amongst other things.
When Linux is almost totally dead, that port
still works :-/ I can lose keyboard and mouse on
Linux (DBUS dead), lose screen (Nouveau loses comms
with NVidia video card), and the RS232 keeps chugging
along just fine.

*******

If you don't know how to set the baud rate with the
MSDOS command to do that, you can always try Putty
and set the rate there. And then, once you drop
the successful Putty session, start using some
utility for doing actual programming.

Garbage can show up on a serial port for two reasons:

1) Baud rate mismatch. Hardwares for which the baud
rate generator is a kludge, even a nominal 19200
might fail to work. That was a problem decades ago.
There were large baud rate errors back then, and no
clever clockgens to speak of.

Always read the docs and use the "default" rate on
your first try. While some kit has autobaud on its
end, exactly how it works may not be documented.
My GPS for example, I think it's 4800 by default or so.

2) Flow control issue at high rates.
RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, none
Using the lower baud rates, can help with gear
that will accept 4800 or 9600 operation. For
more than that, you need something else. For
a four wire cable, you can try XON/XOFF (not
perfect, but better than nothing). RTS/CTS would
involve wires on a nine wire cable (nine wires being
a typical design choice on PCs today). Dialup modems
used to come with 25 pins on their end, just to annoy.

Paul

Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:
On a desktop pc, I eventually gave up and shoved in an old serial card and
Windoze loaded a drive and it works. The issue seems to be that these
adaptors do not implement handshaking properly. Thus data can be lost if
there is no buffer.
Brian


The adapters have buffers.

Between 128 bytes and 512 bytes in some cases.

That's on the USB ones.

*******

I'd recommend one of the OXSemi PCI Express 2S+P cards,
but OXSemi was bought out and crushed. Leaving
some far east company selling substitutes (no data
available on compatibility).

The OxSemi stuff at least, showed up in I/O space.

Precisely why it was necessary to buy Oxsemi and
ruin them, I haven't a clue. Big business for you.
It's not like the company that bought them, makes
2S+P adapters.

*******

The OPs problem is likely a finger problem, as RS232 is
nice legacy stuff where you have to remember all the
little rules for best results. I can never remember
the command for setting a baud rate and have to look
it up.

And when I hooked up my GPS with the serial interface,
at first I was getting garbage on the screen. But
a little fiddling with baud rate and then I could
see the messages OK.

Paul

Paul Wrote in message:
Dave W wrote: On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster wrote: Hi all One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration purposes. The instrument suppliers are next to useless. Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress, his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to provide the serial port. He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't work. Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with robust drivers for Win 10? Thanks Phil I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50 This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that rubbish was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work. So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine. Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver. Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version 3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.You want your adapter vendor to tell you who makesthe chip inside it.Example from one page on usconverters: "The processor chip in this adapter is the FT232RL from FTDI Semiconductors"That should be OK.FTDI was the company that released a driver which *trashed*a Chinese forgery. They did not get good P.R. from this "effort".Everyone loves to get a bargain off Ebay, but noteverything there is going to be fit for purpose.Chips (not an exhaustive list) FTDI (worked here) Prolific (worked here) Silicon Labs (meh, better but still not perfect)And I'm not even a "collector" of these stupid things.I discovered, on my four year old motherboard, thatafter I bought a Prolific, that the motherboard actually*had* RS232. It wasn't on the back panel of the computer.There was a 2x5 header, with a "pattern not the sameas the USB2 headers". And when I cracked open the manualand had a look, that turned out to be an RS232. Themotherboard didn't come with a cable, so I had to makeone of my own! That interface today, is ttyS0 when I'mdebugging Linux on the box, amongst other things.When Linux is almost totally dead, that portstill works :-/ I can lose keyboard and mouse onLinux (DBUS dead), lose screen (Nouveau loses commswith NVidia video card), and the RS232 keeps chuggingalong just fine.*******If you don't know how to set the baud rate with theMSDOS command to do that, you can always try Puttyand set the rate there. And then, once you dropthe successful Putty session, start using someutility for doing actual programming.Garbage can show up on a serial port for two reasons:1) Baud rate mismatch. Hardwares for which the baud rate generator is a kludge, even a nominal 19200 might fail to work. That was a problem decades ago. There were large baud rate errors back then, and no clever clockgens to speak of. Always read the docs and use the "default" rate on your first try. While some kit has autobaud on its end, exactly how it works may not be documented. My GPS for example, I think it's 4800 by default or so.2) Flow control issue at high rates. RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, none Using the lower baud rates, can help with gear that will accept 4800 or 9600 operation. For more than that, you need something else. For a four wire cable, you can try XON/XOFF (not perfect, but better than nothing). RTS/CTS would involve wires on a nine wire cable (nine wires being a typical design choice on PCs today). Dialup modems used to come with 25 pins on their end, just to annoy. Paul

Hi Paul

Thanks for the ultra comprehensive low down.

Can you tell me, if the user sets the baud rate in putty for the
device, does it retain this setting for subsequent connection i.
E. Setup of his instrument?

Phil
--


----Android NewsGroup Reader----
http://usenet.sinaapp.com/

On 08/08/2020 20:57, thescullster wrote:
Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil

I've generally found the Prolific ones to be OK, but don't buy the very
cheapest as there are a lot of fake ones.

Generally, decent ones have a driver included in Windows 10 and "just
work".

In article ,
thescullster wrote:
Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil

It's the same sort of problem with many aftermarket car ECUs - MegaSquirt,
etc. Comms port is RS232, so most modern laptops need a USB to serial
converter. And not all on the market do what it says on the tin.

It's not a Windows thing though - my new desktop MB has a serial port
which works just fine with Win10 Pro. But did need an adaptor thingie to
bring it out to the back panel and give the D connector

--
*Gargling is a good way to see if your throat leaks.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 08/08/2020 20:57, thescullster wrote:
Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil


Your Prolific chip is probably a fake, you need an older driver, this
one works...

Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port Version: 3.3.2.102 [24/09/2008]

....and you can Google where to get it. Every so often, Windows will
change it for a newer version and you'll have to reselect it. I run
several terminals using this driver with older 'Prolfic' chips, no problems.

Lately I've started using FT4232 boards which have four serial ports each.

--
Cheers
Clive

thescullster wrote:

if the user sets the baud rate in putty for the
device, does it retain this setting for subsequent connection i.
E. Setup of his instrument?

The port won't remember (not that a physical COM: port would either) but
putty will, if you save a profile for it.

On 08/08/2020 22:26, Dave W wrote:
On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster
wrote:

Hi all

One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of
gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration
purposes.
The instrument suppliers are next to useless.
Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine
with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress,
his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to
provide the serial port.
He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't
work.

Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with
robust drivers for Win 10?

Thanks

Phil

I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my
Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are
loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50

This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that rubbish
was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker
giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work.

So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by
www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine.

Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about
this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed
their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I
found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver.

Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version
3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.

Same here. If you search you can find the old driver and a utility that
stops Windows updating it to the later one that gives the Code 10 error
with fake chips.

--
Reentrant

thescullster Wrote in message:
Hi allOne of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration purposes.The instrument suppliers are next to useless.Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress, his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to provide the serial port.He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't work.Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with robust drivers for Win 10?ThanksPhil -- ----Android NewsGroup Reader----http://usenet.sinaapp.com/

Thanks for all your comments guys.

I'll pass this on and hope it helps out my sparky mate who is
currently commissioning an edible oil extraction plant in
Russia.

Phil
--


----Android NewsGroup Reader----
http://usenet.sinaapp.com/

thescullster wrote:
Paul Wrote in message:
Dave W wrote: On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster wrote: Hi all One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration purposes. The instrument suppliers are next to useless. Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress, his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to provide the serial port. He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't work. Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with robust drivers for Win 10? Thanks Phil I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50 This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that ru
bbish was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work. So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine. Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver. Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version 3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.You want your adapter vendor to tell you who makesthe chip inside it.Example from one page on usconverters: "The processor chip in this adapter is the FT232RL from FTDI Semiconductors"That should be OK.FTDI was the company that released a driver which *trashed*a Chinese forgery. They did not get good P.R. from this "effort".Everyone loves to get a bar
gain off Ebay, but noteverything there is going to be fit for purpose.Chips (not an exhaustive list) FTDI (worked here) Prolific (worked here) Silicon Labs (meh, better but still not perfect)And I'm not even a "collector" of these stupid things.I discovered, on my four year old motherboard, thatafter I bought a Prolific, that the motherboard actually*had* RS232. It wasn't on the back panel of the computer.There was a 2x5 header, with a "pattern not the sameas the USB2 headers". And when I cracked open the manualand had a look, that turned out to be an RS232. Themotherboard didn't come with a cable, so I had to makeone of my own! That interface today, is ttyS0 when I'mdebugging Linux on the box, amongst other things.When Linux is almost totally dead, that portstill works :-/ I can lose keyboard and mouse onLinux (DBUS dead), lose screen (Nouveau loses commswith NVidia video card), and the RS232 keeps chuggingalong just fine.*******If you don't know how to set the baud
rate with theMSDOS command to do that, you can always try Puttyand set the rate there. And then, once you dropthe successful Putty session, start using someutility for doing actual programming.Garbage can show up on a serial port for two reasons:1) Baud rate mismatch. Hardwares for which the baud rate generator is a kludge, even a nominal 19200 might fail to work. That was a problem decades ago. There were large baud rate errors back then, and no clever clockgens to speak of. Always read the docs and use the "default" rate on your first try. While some kit has autobaud on its end, exactly how it works may not be documented. My GPS for example, I think it's 4800 by default or so.2) Flow control issue at high rates. RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, none Using the lower baud rates, can help with gear that will accept 4800 or 9600 operation. For more than that, you need something else. For a four wire cable, you can try XON/XOFF (not perfect, but bett
er than nothing). RTS/CTS would involve wires on a nine wire cable (nine wires being a typical design choice on PCs today). Dialup modems used to come with 25 pins on their end, just to annoy. Paul

Hi Paul

Thanks for the ultra comprehensive low down.

Can you tell me, if the user sets the baud rate in putty for the
device, does it retain this setting for subsequent connection i.
E. Setup of his instrument?

Phil

In Putty, looks like this. It took me a while to
realize what order to do them. That could be an
older putty - I don't know the versions or release
dates.

https://i.postimg.cc/1zq7vTdV/putty-at-work.gif

As far as I know, when Putty exits (freeing up the port
for some other tool to take over), the setting is
preserved, unless... the next tool sends its own
mode command of some sort. Many tools are mode naive,
and they rely on the cunning operator to have set up
things first. It would be a more modern piece of software
which messes about on you.

*******

In Command Prompt (carries on after command exits), like this.
This example is similar to the Putty one, except Parity is turned on.
That's just to show how a Parity setting would be added. Maybe
mode com1:9600,N,8,1 would be more normal.

mode /?

mode com1:9600,N,8,1,P
echo hello com1:

*******

Serial always has curve balls to throw at you.
For poorly documented products, you may be at
the mercy of other experimenters having tried
all the settings, until one worked.

I never get this stuff working the first time,
but I vaguely remember some bad experiences and
what I'm supposed to try next :-)

An oscilloscope and a breakout box, is the kind
of thing I'd keep handy at work. We used serial
occasionally, when it was too much of a nuisance
setting anything else up. For example, I had a Mac
and a PC, and I was doing Programmable Array Logic
designs, seventy of them. That serial port between
the Mac and the PC, was a godsend. Just had to
bring my "appropriate" adapter cable from home,
which has the wiring to make it work. That was
a home made cable, and I didn't want to make another
for a one-off exercise like that one. The Mac
didn't really have an RS232 port, and their stuff
was a bodge. That's why, if it didn't work, you'd
just shrug or something. It might have been RS422
or RS485 or similar, and the voltages it sent were barely
enough to trigger a receiver on the other end.

Most other serial stuff isn't quite as scary as that.
Signal levels swing +/-3V to +/-25V, with 12V
signals being what you'd get from a motherboard TI 75232.
Charge pump RS232 level shifters are likely a
bit less than 12V (those are inside your USB adapter).
If you really need to drive super-long serial
cables, that's a whole 'nother post.

You can also get optoisolated RS232, which provides
some electrical isolation in plants where the
electrical is dodgy. Customers used to strap those
to the side of our equipment. Good luck shopping
for those.

I've gotten a shock off RS232. One of my nitwit colleagues
at work, cut the safety ground in a distribution bar.
Leaving safety ground floating. And I was drawing sparks
off the ground shield on my RS232 cable. I discovered
the issue first, by getting a shock from it. One
hand on metal chassis of second computer, other hand
touching shield on the RS232 cable I was hauling across the
room. This is part of the reason they make the
optoisolated ones, for oopsy stuff.

That'll give you some idea of the range of fun you can have.

Paul

On Monday, 10 August 2020 12:32:12 UTC+1, Paul wrote:

You can also get optoisolated RS232, which provides
some electrical isolation in plants where the
electrical is dodgy. Customers used to strap those
to the side of our equipment. Good luck shopping
for those.

This one claims to have 1500V isolation:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/DSD-TECH-SH-.../dp/B07TS3GPQ1

John

wrote:

This one claims to have 1500V isolation:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/DSD-TECH-SH-.../dp/B07TS3GPQ1

But it's only good for various TTL voltages, not proper +/- 12V RS232

On Monday, 10 August 2020 13:11:05 UTC+1, Andy Burns wrote:
wrote:

This one claims to have 1500V isolation:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/DSD-TECH-SH-.../dp/B07TS3GPQ1

But it's only good for various TTL voltages, not proper +/- 12V RS232

True, but that is often what is needed.

John

Paul Wrote in message:
thescullster wrote: Paul Wrote in message: Dave W wrote: On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 20:57:21 +0100 (GMT+01:00), thescullster wrote: Hi all One of my electrical colleagues is struggling with connection of gas detection instruments to his laptop for configuration purposes. The instrument suppliers are next to useless. Previous incarnations of the software worked fine on an XP machine with hardware serial port. Now, with the inevitable progress, his current laptop is running Win 10 and has to use an adaptor to provide the serial port. He already has a "Prolific" device from USB to RS232 which doesn't work. Has anyone had similar issues and nailed down a stable device with robust drivers for Win 10? Thanks Phil I had problems with a USB/serial adaptor to upgrade the software on my Garmin eTrex gps unit. I chose the cheapest available - there are loads of orientsl ones costing £1.50 This didn't work, and using a port monitor program showed that rubbish was being received. Then I read an advert from a more expensive maker giving many reasons why the cheap ones may not work. So I bought the next cheapest one at about £15. It's by www.usconverters.com model XS882. This works fine. Later I discovered I already had a Prolific converter. The thing about this is that there were a lot of fake Prolifics, so Prolific changed their driver software so they didn't work. I think mine is fake, and I found a blog saying that you have to use a previous version of driver. Windows Device Manager says it's Prolific SER2PL64.sys version 3.3.2.102. I am on 64bit Windows 8.1.You want your adapter vendor to tell you who makesthe chip inside it.Example from one page on usconverters: "The processor chip in this adapter is the FT232RL from FTDI Semiconductors"That should be OK.FTDI was the company that released a driver which *trashed*a Chinese forgery. They did not get good P.R. from this "effort".Everyone loves to get a bargain off Ebay, but noteverything there is going to be fit for purpose.Chips (not an exhaustive list) FTDI (worked here) Prolific (worked here) Silicon Labs (meh, better but still not perfect)And I'm not even a "collector" of these stupid things.I discovered, on my four year old motherboard, thatafter I bought a Prolific, that the motherboard actually*had* RS232. It wasn't on the back panel of the computer.There was a 2x5 header, with a "pattern not the sameas the USB2 headers". And when I cracked open the manualand had a look, that turned out to be an RS232. Themotherboard didn't come with a cable, so I had to makeone of my own! That interface today, is ttyS0 when I'mdebugging Linux on the box, amongst other things.When Linux is almost totally dead, that portstill works :-/ I can lose keyboard and mouse onLinux (DBUS dead), lose screen (Nouveau loses commswith NVidia video card), and the RS232 keeps chuggingalong just fine.*******If you don't know how to set the baud rate with theMSDOS command to do that, you can always try Puttyand set the rate there. And then, once you dropthe successful Putty session, start using someutility for doing actual programming.Garbage can show up on a serial port for two reasons:1) Baud rate mismatch. Hardwares for which the baud rate generator is a kludge, even a nominal 19200 might fail to work. That was a problem decades ago. There were large baud rate errors back then, and no clever clockgens to speak of. Always read the docs and use the "default" rate on your first try. While some kit has autobaud on its end, exactly how it works may not be documented. My GPS for example, I think it's 4800 by default or so.2) Flow control issue at high rates. RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, none Using the lower baud rates, can help with gear that will accept 4800 or 9600 operation. For more than that, you need something else. For a four wire cable, you can try XON/XOFF (not perfect, but better than nothing). RTS/CTS would involve wires on a nine wire cable (nine wires being a typical design choice on PCs today). Dialup modems used to come with 25 pins on their end, just to annoy. Paul Hi Paul Thanks for the ultra comprehensive low down. Can you tell me, if the user sets the baud rate in putty for the device, does it retain this setting for subsequent connection i. E. Setup of his instrument? PhilIn Putty, looks like this. It took me a while torealize what order to do them. That could be anolder putty - I don't know the versions or releasedates. https://i.postimg.cc/1zq7vTdV/putty-at-work.gifAs far as I know, when Putty exits (freeing up the portfor some other tool to take over), the setting ispreserved, unless... the next tool sends its ownmode command of some sort. Many tools are mode naive,and they rely on the cunning operator to have set upthings first. It would be a more modern piece of softwarewhich messes about on you.*******In Command Prompt (carries on after command exits), like this.This example is similar to the Putty one, except Parity is turned on.That's just to show how a Parity setting would be added. Maybe mode com1:9600,N,8,1 would be more normal.mode /?mode com1:9600,N,8,1,Pecho hello com1:*******Serial always has curve balls to throw at you.For poorly documented products, you may be atthe mercy of other experimenters having triedall the settings, until one worked.I never get this stuff working the first time,but I vaguely remember some bad experiences andwhat I'm supposed to try next :-)An oscilloscope and a breakout box, is the kindof thing I'd keep handy at work. We used serialoccasionally, when it was too much of a nuisancesetting anything else up. For example, I had a Macand a PC, and I was doing Programmable Array Logicdesigns, seventy of them. That serial port betweenthe Mac and the PC, was a godsend. Just had tobring my "appropriate" adapter cable from home,which has the wiring to make it work. That wasa home made cable, and I didn't want to make anotherfor a one-off exercise like that one. The Macdidn't really have an RS232 port, and their stuffwas a bodge. That's why, if it didn't work, you'djust shrug or something. It might have been RS422or RS485 or similar, and the voltages it sent were barelyenough to trigger a receiver on the other end.Most other serial stuff isn't quite as scary as that.Signal levels swing +/-3V to +/-25V, with 12Vsignals being what you'd get from a motherboard TI 75232.Charge pump RS232 level shifters are likely abit less than 12V (those are inside your USB adapter).If you really need to drive super-long serialcables, that's a whole 'nother post.You can also get optoisolated RS232, which providessome electrical isolation in plants where theelectrical is dodgy. Customers used to strap thoseto the side of our equipment. Good luck shoppingfor those.I've gotten a shock off RS232. One of my nitwit colleaguesat work, cut the safety ground in a distribution bar.Leaving safety ground floating. And I was drawing sparksoff the ground shield on my RS232 cable. I discoveredthe issue first, by getting a shock from it. Onehand on metal chassis of second computer, other handtouching shield on the RS232 cable I was hauling across theroom. This is part of the reason they make theoptoisolated ones, for oopsy stuff.That'll give you some idea of the range of fun you can have. Paul

Thanks Paul

I have ordered another connector based on the FTDI chipset and
will forward all your instructions to our man on
site.

Your time and assistance is appreciated.

Phil
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