have you tested with NIRT, & Circa ? Charles
It's almost certainly would be unusable. We have had usb adapters that work, but because of how the nirt cable and usb works it takes forever to download. The physical characteristics of communications differs so much between the 2 formats that it can't be made to work well with the existing Nirt download cable. The good news is that we have a new cable in development that will solve all these issues. It is fairly far along in development, although I can't give you a time line for release.
I have an Advent 7204 Laptop running Vista. To connect I use an Apiotek express card adaptor. This gives Express Card to RS232 and gives no problems at all. Its also dirt cheap, which is always nice.
I use a DSE XH8290 (From Dick Smith) & left it running for several days on a site. Works on everything except NIRT.
So i've just been told that my Prolific USB-to-Serial Converter will not work with Toolkit 1.12. Is there anything else i can do other than ordering (and waiting for) a Dontronics one?
Actually there is a good chance the Prolific will work. However, Prolific drivers are a major major major pain in the backside - in that getting an actual driver that works is your biggest hassle. In general, you need to use those that come from the cable / adaptor vendor web site, not those you download from the Prolific chip maker site. That said, Prolific drivers are a pain - they re-use the same COM port across different cables plugged into a PC, and they don't always work reliably when you plug more than one into a PC at the same time. If you want the no-hassles experience, order from Dontronics. They will do same-day delivery, express post. When I've ordered from them, I usually have the goods either the following day, or the day after. Seeing as you are in Victoria, then depending on where you are you could also resort to calling them and go pick one up.
Dontronics +1 for Dontronics. I've bought a number of things from Dontronics and have been impressed every time. The USB - RS-232 adaptors just work and the oscilloscopes are great value for money. Delivery is quick and you get an e-mail every step of the way. I don't work for these guys, just a happy customer.
So have just had time to debug, but since 1.12 the Aten UC232 converters do not work. Shame as they are the converter used the most by Mac users. Will have to get a Dontronics I think to use on the sites that still have a serial PCI. Edit: I have actually found an old Targus port replicator that works well. Don't know what chipset it is using..
My generic Prolific adapter I got works perfectly without any tweaking. I just need to install the latest official driver. It's on Windows XP tho. Never worked on Windows 8. At first, I always get this "PCI fail to reset" error. Turns out that I have to use a lower version of the CBUS toolkit. I think I got the version 1.11 that worked. Just that some of my switches serial number is unreadable along with it's status(voltage) because it is on firmware 1.00
work with windows 10? Hi all I've just tried to use my "old trusty" prolific USB-serial converter cable on my new laptop with Windows 10 but it doesn't want to play. In Toolkit when I scan it says "port already in use" , In device manager it says "This device cannot start. (Code 10), A device which does not exist was specified." and in settings it says "driver error". I've removed and reinstalled to no avail. (it says I have the best driver) Any ideas?
I had this problem with some of my serial converters on Windows 10. What I did was install this specific version of the Prolific Driver: Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port Version: 3.2.0.0 [7/31/2007] I forgot where I got this driver from but I think it was from some HAM radio website since they use the converters to program radios such as Baofeng. For me, this driver will make the converter detect, start and work properly every single time.
@moderators I was about to link the Sticky post about the USB adaptors to a post when I realised that the suggested links are for Dontronics which Don retired mid last year. (He has a front page explaining this: https://www.dontronics.com/ ) Was just wondering if it was worth updating the links considering it is a Sticky?
Hi...as per my knowledge the Dontronics USB-RS232 converter that CIS recommend is capable of connecting to C-bus directly, HomeMinder directly and C-bus via HomeMinder others would do one or two of the options but not all three. If you only need to concider connecting directly to C-bus then pretty much every USB to RS232 converter that was tested did that.
Top and bottom of this is USE GENUINE FTDI chipped cables, not a $2 knockoff and you will have bulletproof connectivity.
