[SunRescue] Egads! Serial battles...

[John Honniball]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2000 13:45:44 -0400 jeff borisch 
<jeff at sonicrim.com> wrote:
> I have been trying to get to the same thing myself with a PB 165c. I have
> the Serial A connected to a male to male connector then to a Laplink cable
> which then connects to a Mac modem cable.

Don't forget that Macs use an RS-423 interface, which has a 
lower voltage swing than RS-232 (0v to +5V, I think, 
instead of -12V to +12V).  Many RS-232 devices will still 
work, but some won't.

> This setup worked for me on my
> 386i right off the bat (less the serial gender changer) so i thought i knew
> exactly what I was doing. When I graduated to sparcs it didn't seem to work
> anymore.

Hmmm... works with 386i, doesn't work with Sparc... sounds 
like the Sparc serial buffers need the larger voltage swing 
of real RS-232.

> > While waging the battle against "Too much hardware to fit into my room" I
> > decided to teach my old powerbook 170

Again, it's a Mac serial port.  Would it be possible to try 
some of these setups with a PC and some MS-DOS or Windows 
comms software?

--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball at uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England