Tuesday 23 September 2014

Interfacing multiple 9 pin RS232 connectors to the Acer V5 Laptop

Having got the Audio interfacing to the V5 sorted it was time to look at the serial data. The V5 has no RS232 connectors and only 2 USB ports.  Normally I have one serial connection to the radio (9 pin), one to the GPS (9 pin for timing) but now I needed an extra one for the winkey usb (true USB),  having recently discovered my WinkeyUSB in a drawer along with the V3 chip which I installed. I could have used  a USB hub but past experience has found them unreliable in RF environments. Searching my goodies box I found my Edgeport /4 USB serial converter  (bought off Ebayusa for $10) that I used to use on my old Win XP contest computer. This box has one USB connector and four 9 pin serial sockets.  I could connect the Radio and the GPS to the Edgeport box and the Winkey USB directly to the computer, leaving 2 spare com ports.
Configuration software and drivers were available for Windows 7. Comports can be allocated as desired,  I used COM3, COM4, COM5 and COM6. WINKEY USB has COM2

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