Accessories

Works good
We bought this to replace one that we had to give to my brother. It is overpriced but works fine

Works great with Sky Caddie
Works great with Sky Caddie. Just plugged it into my DELL Vostro and it worked right off the bat. Drivers autmatically install.

Works like it should
After some research it appeared the serial to usb adapters were not all equal. They vary in how much of the serial signalling protocol they support. I bought the IOGear converter to hook up my laptop to a Cisco 678 DSL router. It worked great. No problems.

IOGEAR USB to SERIAL Adapter DOES work!
I have two of these adapters and they DO work in XP unlike the reports of the other reviewers here.

I have one connected to a Sony EVI-D30 camera by way of a VISCA cable which connects to the back of the camera and terminates in an RS232 connector that plugs right in to the IOGEAR adapter. Plug that into a free USB slot and XP recognizes the adapter and loads drivers. The EVI-D30 control software sees the connection as a serial port (COM3) and works as it should.

The second one is attached to a Wacom Artz II graphics tablet that has a standard RS232 serial connector. Again, attach the IOGEAR adapter to the Wacom connector, plug it into a free USB slot and it's recognized in XP.

So there may be a driver issue for the other reviewers or they have not updated XP with the latest and greatest updates. This IOGEAR USB to SERIAL adapter has worked perfectly for me right out of the box.

I guess your mileage may vary, but this product definitely DOES work in XP and has been foolproof for me so far.

IOGEAR USB to Serial Poor Choice for Thinkpad T43p
I *had* good success with this device on my older Dell Latitude laptop. However, under Windows XP on my newer Thinkpad T43p this device can be "flakey", depending upon exactly what you are doing with it.

In particular, at 115,200 baud using Zmodem, the device tends to "retry" packets, and sometimes fail completely. Other times it has yielded a Windows "blue screen", causing the PC to reboot. This behavior is not restricted to port COM1/COM2 (i.e., "renaming" the default serial port or not makes no difference in the bad behavior).

I've tried many other "no-name" USB-to-serial dongles, including a number that use the Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm port driver, and all tend to give similar bad behavior, especially with high-speed Zmodem transfers to an embedded Linux system.

The only exception so far has been the Keyspan USA-19HS, which has been flawless with the Thinkpad T43p under all conditions. It includes the ability to configure (and self-test) the USB device, allowing one to "tune" the serial port transfer parameters to maximize throughput. It also has much larger FIFO queues...also configurable. It's only drawback is its package size, which is much larger than dictated by the electronics it encloses.

These things are designed to emulate "legacy" PC serial ports...but not all of them are up to that task...and clearly this is one of them!

Best regards,

Bruce D. Lightner
lightner@lightner.net