News from Mac OSX - Mysterious Serial Port

[cteno4]

the easiest way to futz with serial port connections is to go to radio 
shack (or beter yet the local electronics store) and buy a bag of the 
little crimp on male and female pins (for the serial connectors that use 
these, you connect your wire then push it into the connector housing in 
the proper pin hole). then make some lenghts of 24g wire with the proper 
male or female pins on each end. then you can stick them into the 
holes/pins on each piece of equipment in different configurations untill 
you get communication. just make sure they dont short out on each other. 
they usually plug in tight and dont, but if you want to be sure on this, 
paint the outside of the female pins and the top (non plug end) of the 
male pins with fingernail polish or use a little piece of heat shrink. i 
usually just plug away and just make sure there is no strain on the wires 
which could ever pull two of the crimpons togeather.

once you have the proper pins connected up you can note the config and 
either build good cables or just pop the pins into the connector housings 
and go with your 'bread boarded' wires. works wonders. much better than 
trying to use one of those breakout boxes and futzing with adaptors (some 
of which do crossovers on you and dont note it...). 

I have gotten good serial communications going on the old mac ports with 
all sorts of stuff w/o handshaking, just ground and snd/rcv.

best of luck,

jeff


Jeffrey H. Reynolds, Ph.D.
6620 Michaels Dr.
Bethesda, MD  20817

301.469.8562

email: cteno4 at earthlink.net
       cteno4 at aol.com