From: Dan (dan_at_dbdigitalweb.com)
Date: Sat Nov 22 2003 - 07:26:04 PST
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What I heard is that keyspan adapters are the best, and the rest just
make the melting pot.
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Well I thought I would get a belkin adapter as I have had good results from
their products previously. However the adapter I was looking at was $60, a
bit pricey and more than I what I needed (extra ports etc). I did take
your suggestion and looked at keyspan and found a adapter that was just one
serial port and quite small form factor, perfect for my uses and a
reasonable price. It arrived yesterday and it works like a charm.
Amazingly, it actually will run at a higher speed more reliably than my
built-in serial port. Which I certainly didn't expect since this system is
USB 1 (I don't use many USB bandwidth-intensive devices so USB 1 works fine
for me).
Anyway, thanks to all for your suggestions and info. Also Wayne, thank you
for all the info on RS-232. The reason I always powered down and such when
swapping devices was due to the fact that everything I ever read about
serial ports said that this was necessary. And that serial ports were not
designed to be hot-plugable. Now I know that probably the specs I read were
more precautionary so that if something did happen you couldn't sue them.
But I couldn't find one comment such as yours from someone with vast
experience hot-plugging serial ports and had no problem. If I had, I may
not have purchased the adapter. Oh well I am not going to complain as it is
working very well and suits my needs perfectly. One annoying problem I had
was disconnecting my serial Wacom Intutious tablet to connect something else
(I use it all the time and was very annoying to be without it even for a
short period of time).
Also in regards to certain devices that would be powered or keep the port
constantly open, I believe this tablet fits that description. It does keep
the port constantly open and is powered separately from a transformer block.
But the driver can be shut off and of course the power supply unplugged and
by your description it should be ok to disconnect or reconnect the tablet
then (if I am reading you right). To be honest I always did that anyway,
but I also shut down the computer as well (again having never read anything
saying that serial hot-plugging was safe in general).
Anyway, thanks again for all the info and I am not going to complain about
getting the adapter, it is proving to be very handy to sync my newt without
having to unhook my tablet. :)
-Dan
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