USB set up ?

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Dent

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I'm trying to connect my laptop to a clifford alarm using the cliffnet wizard software, the cable from the alarm has what I think is a DB9 plug, using an adaptor from this to USB. The problem I have is that the usb won't recognize it, is there any way to configure a usb ?.
 
Found a driver :) but when I try to install, it asks me to plug in aof 232 com port ?? , that's with all cables conected, any ideas ?, maybe time to give up :mad:
 
RS 232 is the serial port, so you might need to connect everything to everything for it to 'see' it .. unfortunately serial devices aren't hot-swappable so you also might need to reboot it all.

You could try going into the hardware Device Manager to see if the pc can find the serial port and load the driver that way.
 
Had a further think and you might have to use device manager to map the RS232 as a device using a particular port or com number ... then map a usb port to that com number .. did this a long while ago when usb was first coming in, but can't remember details, and computers still had RS232 serial ports ... ;)
 
i had grief when i bort a usb-rs232 lead it didnt come with drivers and i searched everywhere and tried lots of diff ones... in the end i bort another new cable with driver disk set up piece of ****
 
reet, we do a fair bit of this at work connecting to various control panels. How we get it to work is to buy a usb to serial convertor, which will give you the 9 pin connection you need. Connect this to the laptop/pc without anything else, and it should go through the "new hardware has been found" routine and install the drivers. Once you have done this, go to device manager in the control panel, and you will find the usb to serial convertor has been assigned a virtual comm port number. You need to use this number in the software setup.

Once you are happy that you have the usb to serial convertor installed and a comm port number, turn your attention to the clifford software. make sure the comm port it uses is the same as the usb to serial convertor.

all that done, make sure you deffo have the right 9 pin lead as there are about a gazillion variations, some straight through, some with pin reversals etc.

once that done, you should have some success.

Best of luck, now and again we do come across one that just won't.
 
Cheers OP , I had trouble finding a lead with usb to female plug, they all seem to be usb and male on the other, got one off ebay it looks decent quality but who knows.
 
I suppose it would be remiss of me not to comment on tis thread.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to help.

I have only ever had grief with those USB to something else leads and when asked in a professional capacity I always use the same standard business answer...

Use the right tools for the job. ie why did you buy a laptop without serial :D

Those of us that work in IT tend to keep a spare old lappy just for this purpose - I have an old IBM Thinkpad Pentium 1 :D


Sorry that wasn't any help :D:D:D
 
Tim.C said:
Use the right tools for the job. ie why did you buy a laptop without serial :D

Those of us that work in IT tend to keep a spare old lappy just for this purpose - I have an old IBM Thinkpad Pentium 1 :D
Click to expand...

and therein lies the rub. really really hard to buy a new laptop with a serial port. unless you were forward thinking enough to buy one/keep hold of one from a few years back, you are stuffed.

it's my standard line to get the salesman to **** off in pc world. "Can I help you sir ?". "Yes I need a laptop with a serial port", "You need to buy a standard laptop and a usb to serial convertor","No that won't work as sometimes I need to use a DOS package, which won't support USB", "What's DOS?" AND SO ON.

I've actually kept a Toshiba laptop from about 1998 which not only has a serial port, but runs true DOS.

Our smugness doesn't help our Dent though ! Sadly, North Shropshire is just a bit too far for me to have a run out to him with a laptop, otherwise I would.
 
Heh, the wifes laptop is an old Toshiba running on XP. A few years back we used to run it with the cover off the back so we could swap out the hard drives .. one with a dos/windows 3.1 system on it, one with W98 and the current one with XP on it ... purely 'cos it has a serial port!! Never tried running the serial port through XP but I bet it'd work .. :)

My job at the time was making production lines work properly, and some places were (almost) still steam-powered!!
 
I've got an e-systems laptop running xp pro, and that has a proper pukka serial port that works perfectly every time. bought it about 4 years ago, 'cos I was so shocked and finding one with a serial port !
 
I've found an old toshiba satellite pro, got the port but it's got no o/s :doh: don't think it'll take xp, do you think linux would work on it ? ,then would clifford software work with linux ?.
 
Dent said:
I've found an old toshiba satellite pro, got the port but it's got no o/s :doh: don't think it'll take xp, do you think linux would work on it ? ,then would clifford software work with linux ?.
Click to expand...

Post the spec - specifically amount of RAM - and we can confirm if XP will work.

You need 128MB to make XP run, but it will walk/hobble/crawl with only 64MB!!

If you're just using it for the serial port, you may get away with Windows 2000, which needs a lot lower spec PC, but should run most XP software (they're both based on NT)
 
Dent said:
I've found an old toshiba satellite pro, got the port but it's got no o/s :doh: don't think it'll take xp, do you think linux would work on it ? ,then would clifford software work with linux ?.
Click to expand...

Wife's Tosh is a Satellite Pro too, 4200 series (4290) with a W98SE sticker on it .... works fine on XP .. ;)
 
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