USB Serial Port on MP900c

It's awesome that you have that part number! Any idea where we might be able to source those?

I requested a quote for two quantity here
https://www.asapbuying.com/connector/manufacturer/honda-connectors-connector-parts/page-8/

(meaning one for you one for me)
I'll let you know what they say

@Rich Hawley
Idea # 2 (Slightly offtopic)
What do you think about the PC Card Serial I/O?
I know it's bulky but these two are reasonably priced for once



edit: still haven't heard back from them, I'll update when I find out about the Honda connector

Edited by torch 2023-07-25 2:32 AM

Haven’t seen a Socket pcmcia serial card in years. They work well in the older machines. Think I paid nearly $200 for the same thing back in the ‘90s

That’s a good sign.
@thenzero and I both got one of the cards last night.

It looks like it’s well supported in the HCL and I even found newer drivers than what the HCL had so we have more options.
Crossing fingers they work!
Socket is one of my favorite OEMs. Their Ethernet card is excellent. Drivers work great.

Interesting update on this- after trying various USB RS232 adapters and the serial card and others (and with a real, actual NEC serial cable on order from Japan!) I decided to try an old Sparkfun "FTDI Basic" (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9716). With the zoroyoshi 232usb drivers it does not work at all, but with the official FTDI drivers (https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/) it works! Well, it was dropping some characters, but it worked well enough for me to connect to a NodeMCU ESP8266, change the baud rate, connect to my WiFi, dial a BBS, log in, and read the daily message!

I need to figure out why it's dropping characters but my suspicion is the voltage levels. I'm thinking my MP900c underpowers the USB port and has difficulty really driving these various devices. It does also beg the question if this stuff would all work better with a high quality powered external USB hub. Guess I need to try that next.

Btw- this also means that we can use the MP900 to control/talk to anything that uses TTL serial- Arduino, raspberry pi, zigbee, etc!

Note: in the picture I'm doing a receive only demo with only the receive line connected and the tx line loose. What you see on the screen is the Arduino "ASCII Table" serial example program running on the NodeMCU in the background.

Edited by thenzero 2023-08-08 2:21 PM






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Very cool!

What do you guys think of this kind of product:
https://www.digikey.jp/en/products/detail/wiznet/WIZ750SR-110/8789614

It seems to be a Ethernet Bridge, RS232 to TCP/IP 10/100 Base-T/TX PHY RS232 Interface Module.

I was looking at the manual and it seemed related and interesting.
Manual: https://docs.wiznet.io/Product/S2E-Module/WIZ750SR/users-manual-EN/

Also things like this:
https://www.eztcp.com/en/products/csw-h85f

"CSW-H85F is a serial to wireless LAN adapter that enables you to add wireless networking capabilities to your industrial equipment via RS232, RS422 and RS485. So by applying this wireless LAN adapter, you can control and monitor your serial devices from anywhere in the world over wireless LAN."

-stingraze

Edited by stingraze 2023-08-09 5:20 AM

That's a really cool device, although I don't think it would help out with the problem at hand (no serial port) unless there are WindowsCE drivers to take advantage of it over the network. It wouldn't be hard to write a COM driver that did so, but in that case it would be easier to just write a COM driver that accesses the internet directly and wouldn't require an external device since Windows CE itself already has that infrastructure.

@thenzero

Thanks for the comment.
Yep, indeed it's not very necessary but it's good to know there are these products... Maybe it will be helpful for old "IoT-ish" things. Who knows?

Oh, yeah! I agree, sorry I thought you were asking if it would help with the other problem.

You could also use this to print to an old serial printer wirelessly I guess!