cast iron Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 After the death of my IBM Lenovo Thinkpad I need a USB to serial port connector for my Dash, Data logger, and ECU There are numerous leads and adapters on the market ranging from £1.50 (Amazon & Ebay)to £15.00 (Lindy, Belkin). Is it like scart leads, you get what you pay for? Or will a £1.50 one be as good as one 10 times the price? Quote
XTR2Turbo Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 THey can be a bit hit and miss unfortunately - especially on Vista. I have a £10 one that works on an XP laptop Quote
Richgm Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 I know that USB to serial can be a bit of a minefield. What works on one persons computer may not work on another. Have you (Or anyone else for that matter) looked at using a PCMCIA to Serial card? Most laptops have PCMCIA slots and I would have thought they would be more reliable than USB. Like This One Quote
ljsanders Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 When upgrading to Win 7 64bit, I discovered Win 7 64bit drivers weren't available for neither my Belkin or IBM branded USB serial adapters. There are only a few USB Serial chipset vendors, Prolific being one of them can't remember the name of the others. All I wanted was a driver so I could use Easymap under VirtualBox with a WinXP virtual machine. I found their DeviceID's under the device manager, googled around and discovered they were both Prolific chipsets. So I did a bit more google searching and found a Prolific driver for Win 7/Vista 64bit that happened to work. As XTR2 says. its hit and miss because although the chipset might be the same which means its DeviceID is the same, it depends on how the vendor as wired up the chip which depends on which features of the RS232 interface are used. Quote
cast iron Posted November 16, 2010 Author Posted November 16, 2010 I know that USB to serial can be a bit of a minefield. What works on one persons computer may not work on another. Have you (Or anyone else for that matter) looked at using a PCMCIA to Serial card? Most laptops have PCMCIA slots and I would have thought they would be more reliable than USB. Like This One Good call Quote
BigRuss Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 I bought a very cheap USB one and couldn't get it to work under xp at all. I bought a PCMCIA card from ebay, the cheapest I could find and it just plugged in and worked. The only problem with the one I bought is it sticks out of the laptop meaning you can't leave it plugged in all the time and I'm always worried that I'll snap it as pcmcia cards are so thin! My ecu supplier said that they have found there is much more chance of success with pcmcia than with usb. Quote
BigRuss Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 Yeah, mine is like that startech one, except it was closer to a tenner. If I bought another I'd get this style: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/RS-232-....d9e05e8 to avoid the big lump at the end. Quote
ljsanders Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 PCMCIA wasn't an option for me. Both of my laptops are very recent and PCMCIA is being phased out. My recent work Lenovo W500 doesn't have PCMCIA at all, and neither does my Acer 5739G. Quote
cast iron Posted November 16, 2010 Author Posted November 16, 2010 Mines a 1 year old Dell Inspiron running Vista, I'm just looking into whats on board Quote
adamnreeves Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 A Lenovo died, wow what did you do I bought a generic one from Maplin. Cost no more than a £10. It works with RT dash and Megasquirt ECU at full 115k. Just have to remember to always connect it to the same serial port so the comm port number remains the same. Quote
cast iron Posted November 16, 2010 Author Posted November 16, 2010 A Lenovo died, wow what did you do . It was second hand, I gave it 5 years abuse and the hard drive died Quote
adamnreeves Posted November 16, 2010 Posted November 16, 2010 So your Lenovo has a proper serial port. Mine doesn't If its only the HD why not just replace it. IF you cannot be bothered I'll dispose of it for you free of charge Quote
blue_toaster Posted November 17, 2010 Posted November 17, 2010 A Lenovo died, wow what did you do . It was second hand, I gave it 5 years abuse and the hard drive died you can buy replacement hard drives. They just slot in to the Lenovos Quote
Jumpy07 Posted November 17, 2010 Posted November 17, 2010 Get one with an FTDI chip.. this is what most ECU manufactures recommend and causes less issues with progs written for old serial ports. CJ Quote
dstorey Posted November 17, 2010 Posted November 17, 2010 Get one with an FTDI chip.. this is what most ECU manufactures recommend and causes less issues with progs written for old serial ports. CJ Second that, I use a FTDI chip set one and its worked perfectly on 2 laptops (XP and Win 7) with my ecu Quote
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