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Re: laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
so in your experience how would I get more serial ports on my laptop - I have had suggested a PCMCIA card with serial adapter D plug - this apparently does work (software manufacturer uses these).
Problem I have with this is:
--They are about £100 each
--I am limited to two more peripherals only (two PC card slots on laptop)
--PC card slot is then also used and cannot be used for anything else unless card removed
Any ideas gratefully received.
Cheers Stefan
so in your experience how would I get more serial ports on my laptop - I have had suggested a PCMCIA card with serial adapter D plug - this apparently does work (software manufacturer uses these).
Problem I have with this is:
--They are about £100 each
--I am limited to two more peripherals only (two PC card slots on laptop)
--PC card slot is then also used and cannot be used for anything else unless card removed
Any ideas gratefully received.
Cheers Stefan
G
Guest
Guest
Re: laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
You are running up against the same problems that we are tackling right now, the tight wads who make the laptops dont want to put enough rs232 connections on the machines to really do anything with them!
There are several different type of USB/serial adaptors available at different prices, some are smarter than others.
We are currently attempting to adapt the usb ports to a 9pin rs232 connection to run our gsm phones off of our cheapie ibm laptops.
It may be possible, and I think that a certain amount of experimentation is nessecary, as well as sourcing the right drivers/etc to get your gps to run through the usb, depending on the adaptor that you use.
Some adaptors for GSM phones do not work, and some do, plus we have now gotten in a specific GSM/usb adaptor.
Most of the people that we are talking to at places like Nokia and orange will tell you that you can not run the phone off of the usb, however we know that this is cobblers as Reuters do it all the time.
I have a sneaking suspicion that you should be able run the GPS off of the usb, go to www.videk.co.uk. We sourced a model uc 232a, apparently this supports digital cameras, PDA's, modems, and isdn adaptors and cell phones.
Cant see why you wouldnt be able to transfer gps data, but givem a bell and see what turns up.
Cheers
Doug
You are running up against the same problems that we are tackling right now, the tight wads who make the laptops dont want to put enough rs232 connections on the machines to really do anything with them!
There are several different type of USB/serial adaptors available at different prices, some are smarter than others.
We are currently attempting to adapt the usb ports to a 9pin rs232 connection to run our gsm phones off of our cheapie ibm laptops.
It may be possible, and I think that a certain amount of experimentation is nessecary, as well as sourcing the right drivers/etc to get your gps to run through the usb, depending on the adaptor that you use.
Some adaptors for GSM phones do not work, and some do, plus we have now gotten in a specific GSM/usb adaptor.
Most of the people that we are talking to at places like Nokia and orange will tell you that you can not run the phone off of the usb, however we know that this is cobblers as Reuters do it all the time.
I have a sneaking suspicion that you should be able run the GPS off of the usb, go to www.videk.co.uk. We sourced a model uc 232a, apparently this supports digital cameras, PDA's, modems, and isdn adaptors and cell phones.
Cant see why you wouldnt be able to transfer gps data, but givem a bell and see what turns up.
Cheers
Doug
G
Guest
Guest
Re: laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
There's one guy that comes here will give you a definative answer and tell you how to do it. His name is Andy and if you want to email him his address is andy@classicsales.co.uk What he doesn't know 'aint worth knowing. My company uses him to build all our computers.
There's one guy that comes here will give you a definative answer and tell you how to do it. His name is Andy and if you want to email him his address is andy@classicsales.co.uk What he doesn't know 'aint worth knowing. My company uses him to build all our computers.
G
Guest
Guest
laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
sorry to post this odd one but it is boating related and I cannot get a straight answer from anyone else.
I have a GPS connected to my laptop connected thru the one serial port that laptops come with.
I want to connect another couple of peripherals - NavText / Depth / etc and need to use INDIVIDUAL serial ports for each.
However, as it is a laptop I only have one serial port...I do have a USB as well though.
The question for the propellor heads is if I use the USB, connect it to a 'USB to Serial adaptor' will the laptop 'see' it as a Serial port no questions asked or will it see it as a 'serial port emulation' or something not quite serial porty and therefore not want to talk serial to it??
At the end of the day I would be happy to have ALL deveices connected through the USB via Serial/USB connectors so I can leave everything plugged into the USB hub and just take the laptop with me when I am not on board.
I don't wanna spend the £100 on two / three serial cables and a USB hub to find it all goes wrong for some techhie reason....
Any thoughts??
sorry to post this odd one but it is boating related and I cannot get a straight answer from anyone else.
I have a GPS connected to my laptop connected thru the one serial port that laptops come with.
I want to connect another couple of peripherals - NavText / Depth / etc and need to use INDIVIDUAL serial ports for each.
However, as it is a laptop I only have one serial port...I do have a USB as well though.
The question for the propellor heads is if I use the USB, connect it to a 'USB to Serial adaptor' will the laptop 'see' it as a Serial port no questions asked or will it see it as a 'serial port emulation' or something not quite serial porty and therefore not want to talk serial to it??
At the end of the day I would be happy to have ALL deveices connected through the USB via Serial/USB connectors so I can leave everything plugged into the USB hub and just take the laptop with me when I am not on board.
I don't wanna spend the £100 on two / three serial cables and a USB hub to find it all goes wrong for some techhie reason....
Any thoughts??
G
Guest
Guest
Re: laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
I think I had better start with a quick explanation of the problems here.
This is one of those interesting questions that we really shouldn't have to address. USB was invented to overcome these problems by allowing you to daisy chain long strings of devices from one port and perhaps more importantly, one set of resources (IRQ/Interrupt/DMA).
I started playing with USB over 10 years ago. It all looked very promising but died on its feet because the peripherals to plug into it were so expensive. We all went back to struggling with comm ports.
It was only about 3 years ago that USB devices started appearing again, this time at more reasonable prices. The move was really forced because of the growth of digital photography and the need to push large amounts of data down a cable. The problem with have with our marine electronics is that it is all lagging a couple of years behind mainstream computer kit. There are usb > serial adaptors but it is not a simple matter of just plugging one in and changing the port. It involves a bit of clever software/firmware/hardware to do the converting and they will not work with all devices or software.
There are 3 things you need to run your kit:
The port itself The resources on the computer to suport it The software
I'm going to generalise a bit here or else I'll be in danger of writing a book not a reply on a message board!
The personal computer was designed to support comm1 and comm2 and has all the resources necessary built into the concept. We often have to add more ports, most common is an internal modem as comm4. In fact we could add 20 or 30 given the physical space. The thing to remember is that the computer comes with the resources to support comm1 and comm2. So if we want comm3 and comm4 we let comm3 use the same resources as comm1 and comm4 uses the same resources as comm2.
This (generally) works fine so long as you don't want to use comm1 and comm3 at the same time or comm2 and comm4 at the same time. This is why we call the internal modem comm4, when the next logical port would be comm3. If we had set the modem up as comm3 it would be clashing with comm1 which often has a mouse attached. Mice aren't very good at sending email!
So where does this leave us? Clearly you only have one physical port to plug things into, so at the moment you can only run one piece of kit at a time. Without physical adding a port you are reduced to unplugging item A to plug in item B.
An improvement would be to add say a four way switch to the port into which you could plug four devices. you could then use the switch to flick between the devices.
A further refinement would be to add a virtual comm2, comm3 and comm4. They would all use the same physical port, but you could set each device to use a different comm port.
The next rung up the ladder involves getting yourself a docking station / port replicator for the laptop (£50-£100ish). This piece of kit would give you two physical ports and allow you to use two devices at once.
The larger docking stations allow you to add standard computer expansion cards so you could add a physical comm3 and comm4. By moving memory addresses about it may be possible to get four devices running at once even though we only have two IRQs
Device 1 IRQ1 address 1 Device 2 IRQ2 address 2 Device 3 IRQ1 address 3 Device 4 IRQ2 address 4
It would depend on the combination of software / hardware.
If you would like to take it a bit further then do drop me an email letting me know what kit you are using and I'll try to offer something a bit more concrete to your case.
I think I had better start with a quick explanation of the problems here.
This is one of those interesting questions that we really shouldn't have to address. USB was invented to overcome these problems by allowing you to daisy chain long strings of devices from one port and perhaps more importantly, one set of resources (IRQ/Interrupt/DMA).
I started playing with USB over 10 years ago. It all looked very promising but died on its feet because the peripherals to plug into it were so expensive. We all went back to struggling with comm ports.
It was only about 3 years ago that USB devices started appearing again, this time at more reasonable prices. The move was really forced because of the growth of digital photography and the need to push large amounts of data down a cable. The problem with have with our marine electronics is that it is all lagging a couple of years behind mainstream computer kit. There are usb > serial adaptors but it is not a simple matter of just plugging one in and changing the port. It involves a bit of clever software/firmware/hardware to do the converting and they will not work with all devices or software.
There are 3 things you need to run your kit:
The port itself The resources on the computer to suport it The software
I'm going to generalise a bit here or else I'll be in danger of writing a book not a reply on a message board!
The personal computer was designed to support comm1 and comm2 and has all the resources necessary built into the concept. We often have to add more ports, most common is an internal modem as comm4. In fact we could add 20 or 30 given the physical space. The thing to remember is that the computer comes with the resources to support comm1 and comm2. So if we want comm3 and comm4 we let comm3 use the same resources as comm1 and comm4 uses the same resources as comm2.
This (generally) works fine so long as you don't want to use comm1 and comm3 at the same time or comm2 and comm4 at the same time. This is why we call the internal modem comm4, when the next logical port would be comm3. If we had set the modem up as comm3 it would be clashing with comm1 which often has a mouse attached. Mice aren't very good at sending email!
So where does this leave us? Clearly you only have one physical port to plug things into, so at the moment you can only run one piece of kit at a time. Without physical adding a port you are reduced to unplugging item A to plug in item B.
An improvement would be to add say a four way switch to the port into which you could plug four devices. you could then use the switch to flick between the devices.
A further refinement would be to add a virtual comm2, comm3 and comm4. They would all use the same physical port, but you could set each device to use a different comm port.
The next rung up the ladder involves getting yourself a docking station / port replicator for the laptop (£50-£100ish). This piece of kit would give you two physical ports and allow you to use two devices at once.
The larger docking stations allow you to add standard computer expansion cards so you could add a physical comm3 and comm4. By moving memory addresses about it may be possible to get four devices running at once even though we only have two IRQs
Device 1 IRQ1 address 1 Device 2 IRQ2 address 2 Device 3 IRQ1 address 3 Device 4 IRQ2 address 4
It would depend on the combination of software / hardware.
If you would like to take it a bit further then do drop me an email letting me know what kit you are using and I'll try to offer something a bit more concrete to your case.
G
Guest
Guest
Re: laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
Whew! and thats the short version. Andy might know about Computers but he makes a lousy breakfast his fried eggs always look as if they've been in a crash on the M1.
Whew! and thats the short version. Andy might know about Computers but he makes a lousy breakfast his fried eggs always look as if they've been in a crash on the M1.
G
Guest
Guest
Re: laptop technology question - USB\'s and Serial ports
Added advantage of the docking statio is that you can physically fix the docking station in place then lock the laptop into it when on the move. If your physical fixings are 'hidden' when the laptop is locked in place (and key removed!) you even have reasonable security in a world in which things can disappear if you blink!
Added advantage of the docking statio is that you can physically fix the docking station in place then lock the laptop into it when on the move. If your physical fixings are 'hidden' when the laptop is locked in place (and key removed!) you even have reasonable security in a world in which things can disappear if you blink!