What if I don't have serial?

potatohead · 2010-12-04 14:54

I don't, unless I count the old Tandy Model 100, which I'm still thinking about gutting to hold a Propeller. It's kind of funny. Just snuck up on me. The last desktop machine with a serial port died recently. Bad power supply, and I'm not inclined to fix it. All other machines are various older laptops, USB and that's it!

I've got a Dracblade, and I'm wanting to explore the RAM that's on there. It's my first board with some extended memory capacity. I'm mulling around some video ideas for that RAM

Can this thing be used with a Prop Plug? If so, got some quick 'n dirty mods I can try? Or, maybe the headers are on there, and I just don't know it yet?

I've got the Version 5 layout, BTW.

Toby Seckshund · 2010-12-04 15:27

I have stunted my growth to enable the "legacy Ports" to remain. Win2k (NT) started this for me and I have even ran with WinME just to get by the ports thing. Recently I have retried the Xilinx PIII cable stuff and have been reminded that parallel ports are getting extict too. My laptop is a PIII Dell, purely because of the back connectors, at work they ask me to allow the use of it.

Xilinx without parallel is my next problem, I think that an AVR interface would get around it, but that needs a parrallel or serial port to get around that.

Moral of the story:- Don't let the b*****s lead you into the new way!

Dr_Acula · 2010-12-04 15:28

Do you have USB?

If so, can you get hold of a USB to serial adaptor? I picked up a whole lot on ebay and they were only $1.99 each. They plug straight into the dracblade.

Toby Seckshund · 2010-12-04 15:31

Not all things work through these kludges. Often older sofware will only talk to the real serial ports.

Dr_Acula · 2010-12-04 15:50

Can this thing be used with a Prop Plug?

Yes it can, and I have a schematic at home. Some dracblade boards have even had proplug sockets on them but not v5, sorry. I'm at work, but from memory it is a matter of leaving out the max232 and connecting to the right four pins. Somewhere on the parallax site is the schematic for the propplug and the propeller. The main issue is the max232 and the propplug fighting over a pin, so the answer is to leave the max232 out.

The schematic for the propplug is here http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/prop/32200-32201-PropClipPlug-v1.3.pdf

and leave out the max232.

Oh, and re the PM, no I haven't tried the TV recently with that cheapie TV screen. I must try to find that recent discussion thread that talked about the subtle timing changes to get those small TV screens to synch.

potatohead · 2010-12-04 16:27

Well ok then. I think I don't want to tear it up just for that. Looks like I'll get a USB thing and give that a go. Guess I'll build to SD card for the weekend, then find out who will ship one cheap.

Re: "the new way"

Well, yeah. I hear that. Really I do. But... I am opportunistic on machines these days. There are enough throw aways to just use, and that is cheap, and honestly, pretty low risk. Keep data on media, make programming environments portable and keep it simple otherwise. So far, a USB key with some code project, USB video, drivers, prop tool, board and plug, if needed, just gets it done.

I can literally just walk up to about any machine, spend 15 minutes loading things, and I'm off to the races! That's worth a lot to me these days where it's not always possible to setup shop and be there to use the stuff.

So, the truth is, I'll get a USB to serial device I can live with and understand, and rock and roll from there. The purist in me is kind of annoyed by that, but then again, I really don't care for PC's all that much, beyond their usefulness as interfaces to the cool stuff! The days where I thought hardware was cool are long gone, with it all bland, and "good enough".

10 years ago, you would have seen me running IRIX, programming a VCS, and walking around with a really sweet HP palmtop with a Z machine on it for fun, or to entertain the kids in the car, and for use as a portable console. Loved those times, but they are more or less passed now. I gave it all to somebody who wanted to setup a bunker, kept the VCS and a old computer or two, and have moved to SD / USB with no regrets. There are no floppy drives of any kind in my existence, beyond the one hanging on the office wall, with a live virus on it, marked "LIVE VIRUS, DO NOT BOOT", hanging near the big, beautiful and quite useless video disc.

Honestly, a new Prop board, or some retro computer is a whole lot more fun than a PC is, and with Open Source software, one can get a pretty nice, portable, license free computing environment. Couple that with stuff found "in the cloud", and my personal / hobby computing life is pretty golden, not married to any particular hardware. I've come to like it that way, and... that really means "the beast" can only do so much damage, and the skills map to what I have at hand.

The one last project on the list is to make a bootable Linux USB key, Propeller ready. When that's done, I think things will be pretty sweet. For now, I just keep a set of win32/64 drivers handy, and it's no big deal.

Appreciate the sentiment though.

Truth is, another project on the list should just be a prop terminal, with video outs, and maybe scope video outs, just because. For now, that Model 100 will make for a interesting "console" and that makes me happy.

Since I'm on kind of a soap box, virtualization is a beautiful thing. It's not so great for the stuff we do here. That's too many layers of indirection for my blood. But, for corporate IT, it's golden. We recently had our main machine go down. I copied the virtual machines to some training laptops, plugged in some USB storage, and had the company up and running proper, off those machines running in the conference room in roughly one hour. Want to know the scary thing? Nobody noticed any real difference!

I'm sold on that, particularly if I do require something that has a expensive license attached. There is NO WAY, I'll do anything other than virtualize that, worst case, networking internally to fire off the target app on a local machine, easily paying the RAM cost to get that done. It's portable that way, meaning once I've invested, that investment is done, and I can do other things. Life is too short to do otherwise, IMHO.

If you want to do some damage on the beast, I think that's probably the most potent way to get that done. Do it on a Linux, and you can be pretty golden in a lot of ugly scenarios.

Dr_Acula · 2010-12-04 18:16

When I get home I'll take a look at the v9 board and convert to v10 and see if I can add a propplug socket. v9 is a great board - the first one with a mouse and a decent area of prototyping plus the parallel port, but there were some mistakes too, eg the DC socket has the incorrect sized holes. I might therefore end up with a few v9 boards that I could giveaway to good homes. So potatohead don't panic about hacking the board a bit if you want to as I can send you some more.

Humanoido · 2010-12-05 00:08

If you only need a serial terminal, a BASIC Stamp does a nice job. We've used these for years and even the BS1 is excellent for making a nice serial terminal.

potatohead · 2010-12-05 00:19

Honestly, I think I want the serial on there now. Never did much with it, so now's the time! Some USB device will work. Always does. Just have to go through annoyance stage first.

Appreciate the offer Dr_A. If bad things happen...

Wrote out a few things on SD card. You know what is needed? Wireless SD, that one can just write files to! That would be sweet!

Dr_Acula · 2010-12-05 00:35

Wireless SD, that one can just write files to! That would be sweet!

We could do that. I've got some wireless modules that plug straight into D9 sockets. Wireless on a serial port on the PC (or USB/Serial). Wireless module on the second D9 plug. Then some software to handle the file transfer and save it to SD card. I've done a wireless xmodem file transfer from one prop board to another but this was using CP/M, so the file ended up on a CP/M disk image, not as a standard file. I reckon KyeDOS has enough spare memory to handle this though. The cog code driver is the dual serial in one cog code (by Tim Moore), and there are sd routines, and KyeDOS has xmodem. So all the bits are there.

Toby Seckshund · 2010-12-05 01:47

As I keep building board after board, mostly DemoBoads or DracBlades, I made a standalone three transistor interface. It has a 10way header socket on the wire bit it is just doubled up 5s (1+2, 3+4, ...). it needed the extra pin for the 3.3V back into the interface. Then all I have to do is have a 5 x 0.1 inch pitch header ( "Baby" had a 2mm version).

I bought a chip, ages ago, for the USB way. I chickened out when I saw the pin pitch.

My old laptop suffers the opposite problem, it only has one USB, I have to hunt around to find PS2 mouses.

Dr_Acula · 2010-12-05 03:02

Working on the version 10 board. Lots of minor tweaks - eg the PCB fab house keep getting the DC jack wrong unless I tell them each time, so I got into Eagle and designed my own. Can a square peg fit in a round hole? Absolutely, just make the round hole slightly bigger. And put solder holes on the vga socket so it mounts more firmly. That also involved editing the Eagle library.

But the important thing is I added a prop plug socket. Any other requests?

potatohead · 2010-12-05 10:11

Cool!!!

I'm thinking about this guy: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839328005&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-PC+Cards/PCMCIA+Add-on+Cards-_-Syba-_-39328005

well, maybe not that exact one, because I don't see win7 / vista support, but something like it.

Re: Only one USB. Beware of the PCMCIA USB devices. I've had a couple cheap-o ones in the past, and they were absolutely horrible, not able to deliver the full current in the spec. Portable disks, for example, would not work without a booster supply of some kind.

Kind of wondering about serial in this respect too. Will have to do some checking on things.

Man, this is a GREAT board though. Can't wait to tinker with the RAM. The supplied code is very nicely done too. Kudos to Dr_A and Cluso for that.

Toby Seckshund · 2010-12-05 10:50

We had a lot of trouble with AMX software, in my last job, as the software demanded that the serial was one of the 0 or 1 ports, not the 3 +++ that got mapped by USB addons. The way around it was a PCMIA (?) one , it had "Brain" somewhere in it's name I think. It was very expensive though.

As to the DracBlade boards, it is pretty well bomb proof. I have done all sorts of homemade injustices to it and they keep on working ( including one on a breadboard).

I tried to put up some layout pics of the latest molestations using a XC9572, but the forum has changed again (enough to confuse this stupid one).

localroger · 2010-12-05 13:36

When they first came out USB-serial converters were pretty bad, they would regularly lock up and have all kinds of glitches but for the last few years they seem to work pretty well. I have used a Sabrent adapter cable ($12 from Amazon) to program PropRPM's and to interface industrial hardware to PC's. As long as your software uses the Win32 serial API you're fine. On XP you're also fine if it uses the Win16 API, but that seems to be broken as of Vista/7. If you've got anything going straight to the hardware DOS style you might as well start planning to replace it now. The last time my company paid a premium for a laptop with a "serial port" from Dell, the port turned out to be a USB-serial adapter mounted internally.

Gadgetman · 2010-12-05 13:47

You could also consider a PCI card:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4632
($11.87)

Or for modern laptops, an Express Card version:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.45793
($9.90 )

All prices are with shipping.
This is a 'buyer beware' and read the comments site.
Stay away from all memory chips as a lot of it is fake or defective in one way or another.

but the prices are good... ;-)

Edit:
I believe that Toshiba still sells a laptop with a RS232 interface.

Dr_Acula · 2010-12-05 13:59

I bought a job lot of USB to serial adaptors and I've thought about including them in a kit at some stage. It has been handy in the past when debugging both serial ports to have both talking back to the PC at the same time. One of the dracblade ports is male and one female, so for the male one you need a crossover cable. Not very hard though - pin 5 goes straight through and pins 2 and 3 are crossed.

It appears though that the demand is there for a propplug port so I added one on the latest board.

potatohead · 2010-12-05 16:51

Yeah, I think that's a good move. Maybe have a simple jumper, for it or something, where it's a no-brainer to disable it. The Prop Plug is pretty great actually. I've got mine mounted on a cable, after losing the thing for long enough to be worried about it. It's in use more or less constantly.

What if I don't have serial?

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