How to hook up using a USB to Serial adapter cable?

ArtBurke

Hi to all:

I have the Stamp Activity Board and am using the BS2SX chip with it.
I have a cable which is a USB to DB9 serial adapter cable (I think that I used it on another computer with my Dragon12
68HC12 board).

I tried but couldn't get it working last evening. I downloaded some drivers for it, but when the computer sensed that "new hardware was found", I browsed to the subdirectory that I unzipped the drivers into, but the computer apparently couldn't match up the drivers and the cable.
I do not have a serial port on my laptop, but do know that this board worked with my older computer with a serial port.
I guess the big unknown is getting the board to work with the serial adapter cable.
Please help
Thanks,

Art

Steph Lindsay

Hello Art,

When the board is connected, what message are you getting in the BASIC Stamp Editor with Run > Identify?· Not every brand of USB to Serial Adapter works for BASIC Stamp programming. What brand are you using?· Our Tech Support guys may be able to help if they know the specific brand/model. If you are in the continental US you can call them free of charge at 1-888-99-STAMP.

In case the kind that you have isn't going to be compatible, we·carry our own USB-to-Serial Adapter that works with all of our products. The drivers for it are installed automatically with the latest version of the BASIC Stamp Editor; you can download it from this page.

-Stephanie Lindsay

Editor

Parallax Inc.

ArtBurke

Hi Stephanie:

I have a blue cable which has a couple small smd chips on the db9 side of the cable.
It has on the little board inside the db9 as "AP1100" version 1.1

One chip is the "ADM213 EARS 0512".
I've tried a couple different drivers but unsure as to if they installed, etc...

I think that I found a link to the cable that I'm currently trying to use:

http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/catalogs/c274/P87.pdf

Thanks for the help,

Art

NetHog

Art, if you look in device manager, is there an "unknown device", or is there a serial device marked as "not working", or is there nothing at all?
If there is a "Details" tab in device manager (depends on the OS), select "Hardware IDs" from the drop-down, and list what values it indicates. Hopefully I'll be able to help you further.

ArtBurke

Hi:
I checked the device manager. I looked under all categories but there are no "unknown" devices (I've seen that many times before with other computers and would recognize it if I saw it).

Do you think that the drivers are installed?
I'm not sure what drivers would work with the cable that I have. I'm lost.
I know that I had the cable working with a "Technological Arts" 68hc11 processor that I was working on.
Thank you for the help,



Art

NetHog

At the start of the thread, you was talking about not having the right drivers for the USB->Serial adapter. If the USB->Serial cable works for the 68hc11 on this computer, then the driver is installed. Look under "Ports", see what COM ports you have listed and present. USB attached COM Ports are usually numbered COM5 onwards. Bluetooth COM ports can also be listed in this range.

If you look at the properties of the COM port, look at "Location" and see what it says. Also look at "Details" "Device Instance Id", see what that says too. Before we go anywhere else, let's figure out if this USB->Serial is installed or not [noparse]:)[/noparse]

If it is installed, plug it into the activity board, with the stamp unpowered. (Yes, unpowered). Use the option to search for any Stamp's. You should see a list with columns that say something like "Loopback" "Stamp"... The COM port connected to the unpowered stamp should show Loopback as "Yes" and Stamp as "No" (if I recall correctly, I'm not at the right computer right now).

With the Stamp powered up, use the same option to search for stamps, and see what it says.

When you tell me which of these steps is failing, I, or someone else, can help you better diagnose this.

ArtBurke

OK...
I now remember that I purchased the USB to Serial adapter cable from Technological Arts.
But, I can't find the CD with the driver on it. I found a website with some sort of "Virtual Com" port driver, but
when I go to "Browse" for the driver, my PC tells me that it can't find a driver associated with the cable.
Then I found where the EPROM in the cable may have a different(and probably does) signature than the driver is looking for.

Am I fighting a loosing battle trying to find a driver to work with this cable? I emailed Tech Arts and am waiting to hear from them.

I really want to get my Stamp Board working here soon .
I'll give them a day and see what happens. Any ideas regarding other drivers that I can try with this cable?

I think that I found the same cable at "Jameco", but can't find a driver for it. Maybe it's the way I'm installing the thing.
I've tried uninstalling any drivers that I can find associated with the cable (which I can't find any).

Thanks for the help,

Art

NetHog

if you don't have a driver installed, then you should have a device with a yellow-bang sign on it, probably under USB devices, or under COM devices... can you look for this? From there we can find out what the hardware ID is, and might do better to find a driver. Alternatively, if you're using Windows XP, look for a file "setupapi.log" under c:\windows\system32, at the end of that file should be information about the device that failed install, including the hardware ID it's looking for... if it's vista, the technique is different again.

ArtBurke

Thanks for the help from everyone.

A gentleman from Parallax emailed me the driver and it is working well.

Art