On 11/14/2011 05:07 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

C wrote:

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On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 09:32, C. van Nidek wrote:

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As I am sorting out older hardware I stumbled on a cable with 25 pin male connector on one side with a 25 female and 9 female connector on the other side of the cable. I can not remember what the purpose was for this cable and do not know what to use it for. Could somebody come up with a use for it?

Just guessing... I would say it's an old serial cable. They were typically used for modems.. HP Plotters... some old printers. Probably not a lot of use now.

Yeah, those sound like DB-25 and DB-9 plugs -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature

the serial DB-25 plug is long retired, but the DB-9 is still frequently used though.

Thanks Per, Nice and clear description of the serial DB-25 and the DB-9 at the above Wiki site. Will retire the cable :( -- Linux User 183145 using LXDE and KDE4 on a Pentium IV , powered by openSUSE 11.4 (i586) Kernel: 3.1.0-8-desktop LXDE WM & KDE Development Platform: 4.7.3 (4.7.3) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/14/2011 04:00 PM, doug pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

On 11/14/2011 06:50 AM, C. van Nidek wrote:

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On 11/14/2011 05:07 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

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C wrote:

used though.

Thanks Per, Nice and clear description of the serial DB-25 and the DB-9 at the above Wiki site. Will retire the cable :(

Don't throw it out. Some day you may acquire a plotter, or something like that, that still uses a serial interface.

--doug

Yes, but the computer will not have one to plug in to. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2011/11/15 00:01 (GMT) Jim Henderson composed:

On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:00:39 -0500, doug wrote:

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Don't throw it out. Some day you may acquire a plotter, or something like that, that still uses a serial interface.

If I'd kept all the electronics and cables that I'd had "in case I might need it some day", my basement would be full of old stuff, 386 desktops, 486 servers, SCSI hard drives, EISA controllers, etc. I had some old AST Rampage boards I had received back in 1988 "just in case" I might need them.

Need is inversely proportional to availability. My needs are modest, because I don't toss things that I might ever have a use for, particularly copper cables, which could some day be a form of currency. :-)

I would guess that if one were to acquire a device that needed a serial cable, one would still not be difficult to find.

Just because serial cables have been easy to find in the past is no guarantee that they will continue to be after new PCs haven't had serial ports in over 10 years. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Felix Miata wrote:

Just because serial cables have been easy to find in the past is no guarantee that they will continue to be after new PCs haven't had serial ports in over 10 years.

Of course, throwing away a cable will guarantee you'll need it shortly. ;-) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Jim Henderson wrote:

On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:00:39 -0500, doug wrote:

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Don't throw it out. Some day you may acquire a plotter, or something like that, that still uses a serial interface.

If I'd kept all the electronics and cables that I'd had "in case I might need it some day", my basement would be full of old stuff, 386 desktops, 486 servers, SCSI hard drives, EISA controllers, etc. I had some old AST Rampage boards I had received back in 1988 "just in case" I might need them.

I would guess that if one were to acquire a device that needed a serial cable, one would still not be difficult to find.

Any machine you would want to hook up a serial console to :-) Although the cable in question would not be really useful for that - maybe as an extension. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (3.8°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Jim Henderson wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:33:16 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:

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Any machine you would want to hook up a serial console to :-) Although the cable in question would not be really useful for that - maybe as an extension.

Of course, that would imply the machine has a serial port on it to begin with - seems rarer and rarer these days.

On office desktops and consumer PCs they're definitely an endangered species, but e.g. HP Proliant servers still have them. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (3.9°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

On 11/15/2011 02:40 PM, Per Jessen pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

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Jim Henderson wrote:

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On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:33:16 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:

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Any machine you would want to hook up a serial console to :-) Although the cable in question would not be really useful for that - maybe as an extension.

Of course, that would imply the machine has a serial port on it to begin with - seems rarer and rarer these days.

On office desktops and consumer PCs they're definitely an endangered species, but e.g. HP Proliant servers still have them.

And there is a serial/usb dongle that will allow you to still usr serial devices.

Yeah, the lack of a serial port on laptops probably prompted development of those.

At least I have one that I may auction off sometime in the future. :-)

Does it work with openSUSE? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (3.6°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/15/2011 03:36 PM, Per Jessen pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

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On 11/15/2011 02:40 PM, Per Jessen pecked at the keyboard and wrote:

And there is a serial/usb dongle that will allow you to still usr serial devices.

Yeah, the lack of a serial port on laptops probably prompted development of those.

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At least I have one that I may auction off sometime in the future. :-)

Does it work with openSUSE?

It did for the time that I needed it. -- Ken Schneider SuSe since Version 5.2, June 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/15/2011 5:12 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:28:13 -0500, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

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And there is a serial/usb dongle that will allow you to still usr serial devices. At least I have one that I may auction off sometime in the future. :-)

Yep, I've got one of those in order to apply updates to my Harmon-Kardon sound system.

Jim

You're lucky it actually worked! The H/K not the usb serial dongle. I tried to do that for my brother's H/K surround amp, Some model that ends in 247, and could not get a clean working connection. It was the H/K NOT the dongle or the laptop since I use both routinely all the time to connect to several kinds of devices including PDU's and UPS's that don't have anything but a serial connection, terminal/port/console servers, switches. But the H/K updater just would not work at all, and when I googled and finally found some posts on a developer forum that showed what the actual serial port settings the updater wants to use, and used teraterm and putty to connect instead of the updater util, I could see that it wasn't generating clean consistent output. The devel posts said what to expect, send this, expect that response etc, it worked enough to show that it was at least connected and responding, but it was acting like a classic bad serial connection, lots of dropped output, inconsistent output etc, except the wiring was perfect and I even had 3 different dongles with me and 3 different serial cables from dongle to amplifier. Further googling enlightened me that many other people have the same problem and the consensus is the units simply suck and the uart or something else related to serial port access is simply crap and 25 to 50 percent of units don't actually have that function working. Some people managed to get their unit updated by just trying over and over again and after 10 or 30 times it worked once by luck. I friggn love days like that. Got my brothers entertainment console all apart all day one sunday, no one can watch tv, kids can't play ps3 or wii, dogs are whining stuck in their cages because I can't have them banging around, and after a couple solid hours of trying to employ my famous "I always win" wizard powers to overcome crappy tools and crappy instructions and utter lack of detailed documentation, and get the job done _anyways_, and in the end still end up not having got the job done. Some people's machines got bricked and others simply failed to update, and some people were able to get their machines warranty replaced, but of course my brothers was out of warranty and we didn't have the receipt anyway. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/15/2011 9:24 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:31:52 -0500, Brian K. White wrote:

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You're lucky it actually worked!

The H/K not the usb serial dongle.

Interesting - I hadn't heard of problems. We picked up the AVR-254 (I believe that's the model) at Costco a couple years ago. It did kinda stink that I had to have a Windows machine to upgrade it, but it took the update without any problem at all.

But I'll keep your info in mind if another update comes out. I hadn't considered that the electronics might throw too much noise for the update to run. Good cautionary tale.

Jim

Looking back over the forum thread, looks like it was pretty much a AVR-247 problem only, along with several others unrelated to the serial port. At least few people claimed that using an old machine with a regular serial port instead of a usb-serial worked when the usb-serial didn't. Same units, same cables. It's possible. The usb-serial adapters I was using were certainly well tested using other software and connecting to other devices, but it's still possible that some particular software connecting to some particular device could still fail on it even if everything else works. Sorry for allowing this to get so far off topic. Actually, it sort of bears on the OP's question. In this example, people had to dig out windows98 pc's from their garages to perform this firmware update on their brand new home theater systems to fix various video and sound bugs. Or else pay to ship them to H/K and back, and live without them for a week or more. This particular modem cable would not have helped. But not throwing out old computer stuff in general did. -- bkw -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 04:27, Felix Miata wrote:

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It's possible. The usb-serial adapters I was using were certainly well tested using other software and connecting to other devices, but it's still possible that some particular software connecting to some particular device could still fail on it even if everything else works.

None of these converter failures are any surprise to me. I've tried 4 different kinds of USB to PS/2 converters. None were capable of getting me into the PC BIOS. Some were unable to provide access to Grub menu choices. All worked once Linux or WinXP were fully booted.

USB to serial converters I've never tried, as I always have few puters that lack serial ports, lots with them, and PCI cards to add them to machines that lack them.

I've got an ancient wireless IR keyboard. The receiver has a PS/2 connector for the keyboard and a serial connector for the mouse - that's how old it is. I bought a PS/2 to USB converter cable off eBay, and then connected an old serial to PS/2 converter to the PS/2 cable for the mouse and plugged it all in to my computer (used as a media centre)... this mess of converters and cables works very well at the BIOS level and in openSUSE (never failed once), and fails intermittently/randomly in Windows :-) C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Per Jessen wrote:

the serial DB-25 plug is long retired, but the DB-9 is still frequently used though.

ARGHH!!!! It's "DE-9". There's no such thing as a "DB-9". The 2nd letter refers to the shell size. The 25 pin connector uses a "B" shell, the 9 pin, "E". Another popular connector is the DA-15 which was used for joysticks etc. That wikipedia link lists the various shell sizes with common uses. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

David C. Rankin wrote:

On 11/14/2011 07:43 AM, James Knott wrote:

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Per Jessen wrote:

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the serial DB-25 plug is long retired, but the DB-9 is still frequently used though.

ARGHH!!!!

It's "DE-9". There's no such thing as a "DB-9". The 2nd letter refers to the shell size. The 25 pin connector uses a "B" shell, the 9 pin, "E". Another popular connector is the DA-15 which was used for joysticks etc. That wikipedia link lists the various shell sizes with common uses.

And to think, I could have gone my whole life wistfully oblivious to the fact that the 2nd letter referred to the shell size of the connector.... God I love this list :) Thanks James ;-)

Years ago, I used to work in planning for a large telecommunications company, where I ordered connectors by the 1000's. I wouldn't have had much luck ordering the wrong item. Industrial supplier catalogues list the correct part identifier, but those selling to the public use "DB-9", because they have to deal with the ignorance of the general public. Incidentally, the first letter "D" refers to the connector series (the shells are sort of D shaped) and of course the number refers to the number of pins. I suppose, if you wanted to spend the money, you could get a connector manufacturer to make a custom 9 pin connector in a DB shell. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Dave Howorth wrote:

They used to be quite common, at least the form with just 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,20 present.

It's still a DB-25 connector. It's just missing some pins. Anyone can do that with a connector where you plug in the pins as required. You can insert the pins with a small hand tool, as I have done many times. Regardless, those 9 pin serial port connectors used the "E" shell. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, 2011-11-14 at 16:44 +0000, Dave Howorth wrote:

James Knott wrote:

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And to think, I could have gone my whole life wistfully oblivious to the fact that the 2nd letter referred to the shell size of the connector.... God I love this list :) Thanks James ;-)

+1 Thanks

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I suppose, if you wanted to spend the money, you could get a connector manufacturer to make a custom 9 pin connector in a DB shell.

They used to be quite common, at least the form with just 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,20 present.

I remember by RS232: Regular Soldering 2->3 and 3->2 hw (allthough that spec talked about voltage levels) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Sorry, I missed the bit about the 9 pin connector on the other end. That cable is for a serial port. The 9 pin serial port connector was introduced with the IBM AT. You'd normally use it with an external modem. James Knott wrote:

C. van Nidek wrote:

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As I am sorting out older hardware I stumbled on a cable with 25 pin male connector on one side with a 25 female and 9 female connector on the other side of the cable. I can not remember what the purpose was for this cable and do not know what to use it for. Could somebody come up with a use for it?

It could have been for connecting to the old style serial ports or an extension for a printer cable. It might have also been used with a printer switch. Without knowing what pins are connected, it's impossible to say whether for serial port or printer. If all 25 pins are connected, it could be used for either.

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