Serial I/O PC Card - How to Test?

Backstory:
Okay, so @thenzero and I teamed up to get Socket Serial I/O PC cards for our MobilePro 900s

Problem:
The Serial I/O card only terminates in a female connector, thus I can't connect it to anything I have except the Serial Cable for my MobilePro 790

Gist:
I'm too lazy to buy a female to male adapter to test ActiveSync

Question:
Can I connect the male connector on my MobilePro 790's serial cable to the female connector on the MobilePro 900 and just do some kind of communication?

All I want to do is make sure the Serial I/O PC Card works in the basic of ways (the driver in the HCL does indeed recognize the card) so some way to have the 790 and 900 communicate?

I just want to get this done soonish before the return period on the I/O card is up

Question #2
The card is very slightly warped and takes effort to remove from the MobilePro 900
I’m being careful with it but I think ideally I should just leave the card inside of the device to reduce risk of damage ?
Or is this a dealbreaker and I should return it?

Edited by torch 2023-07-28 9:22 AM

Just test the card first.

Is it a female 9pin-Dsub connector? Then it is defined as a remote device - not a PC according to the old standard. But that makes sense, PC as a kind of "master" (was a male Dsub for RS232 as a standard) and the CE-device as a "slave"

Testing is easy. Just bridge pin 2 and pin 3 (don't be afraid to bridge something else in the process and to damage it, the RS232 is very robust, even against voltage overload).

If you have bridged it succesfully you start the terminal, choose 2400baud, no RTS/CTS or hardware handshake. Xon/Xoff can be switched on or off.

Now you should see your typed text on the screen just echoed through the RS232-bridge.

If you see nothing you either have got the bridge wrong or there is some damage elsewhere.

Good luck!
stefan

Thank you, I was playing with it, and figured out that it's not compatible with the 900. Every time the COM port is opened, it locks up the MobilePro 900 completely. I'll try to revert from CE4.2 to CE3.0 to see if it fixes the issue and report back

Is that really a PC-card-slot on the device? Most of these old devices only have PCMCIA.

If you try to use a PC-card in a PCMCIA-slot your error matches the faults I experienced in that case. The device freezes either immediately when the card is plugged in or it shuts down when accessing the PC-card.

I got it to work!
Windows CE 3.0 (HPC2000) on the MobilePro 900 lets me communicate with the card.

I don't know the correct word- I just use the word PC Card for PCMCIA
I know it's not Cardbus though, plus this card is in the HCL
https://www.hpcfactor.com/hcl/detail.asp?hcdid=275&pn=1&categoryId=%2D1&sortBy=&hclq=Socket+Communications&gowince=1%2C3%2C5%2C7%2C10

Great

Nice that you got it running.

Well...it's working in 3.0 certainly. But we have not been able to get it to work in 4.2 so far. Basically the card is recognized by the driver and loaded as COM2 but as soon as anything tries to open the COM port the program freezes. The card works fine in any number of 3.0 devices (jornada 720, MP790, MP900 running 3.0).

Any thoughts on this?

I found six four driver versions or so for a slightly different model in HCL. I’m going to flash 4.2 back on the 900 and see if any of those work.

https://www.hpcfactor.com/hcl/detail.asp?hcdid=276
Edit: I tried two versions + the version on my CD.

All same behavior. (hanging/crashing device upon opening com port)

Edited by torch 2023-07-30 7:52 AM