I was very surprised that the Belkin did not work with XP. Not being
familiar with XP, I'm thinking there is a way around it. Just like when
I installed WT4I Cabrillo Tools, it would not work either because the PC
didn't have Java Virtual Machine on it. So I went out on the web, found
JAVA Virtual Machine, downloaded & installed it and now Cabrillo Tools
works.
Why would Belkin offer an XP driver set if it doesn't work under XP? Even
though the driver is not Microsoft digitally signed, I'm under the
impression
it should still work. It's an interesting question as to why it doesn't.
For those not familiar with Microsoft digitally signed drivers, refer to
http://www.microsoft.com/winlogo/benefits/signature-benefits.mspx.
I (and many others) have had great success with multi-port serial boards
that use the same IRQ. I have an 4 port ISA board in my old PC that
works great. You can use any of the ports at the same time. I've read
reports from the WriteLog reflector of the new PCI boards by Byterunner and
SIIG
working under XP. I'm going with the Byterunner board because that is what
I have in the other PC.
I wrote Byterunner technical support some time ago asking if their
USB-to-Serial
adapters would run 5-bit code. They said they did not know. I found
out that they use the FT8U232AM UART chip. Looking at the data sheet for
the
FT8U232AM chip, nowhere does it mention 5-bit. It mentions only 7 and 8-bit
conversion. I'm guessing the Byterunner USB-to-Serial adapter will not work
for 5-bit Baudot FSK transmission. See
http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/ft232r08.pdf
for more information on the FT8U232AM chip.
With MMTTY, you can now generate FSK from a parallel port, but I've not
tried it.
However, you cannot use a parallel port to generate FSK when using the MMTTY
engine
with WriteLog and the WriteLog MMTTY plug-in because the port selection is
done
in the Rttyrite window and not the MMTTY setup window and there is no
parallel
port selection in the Rttyrite Port menu. I've asked that this be added in
the
future but I don't know if it will happen.
As far as IRQ's goes, with XP, not having an open IRQ should not be a
problem.
I just looked at mine and see there are 24 IRQ's and several are not used.
What
I've done on Win98se PC's to free IRQ's is to do stuff like disable printer
ports
in order to free up the IRQ or try to share with another device. I had
mixed
results and it's always a challenge to play with IRQ's.
Interesting questions to ponder.
73, Don AA5AU
-----Original Message-----
From: rtty-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:rtty-bounces@contesting.com] On
Behalf Of Wes Cosand
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 7:10 AM
To: rtty@contesting.com
Subject: [RTTY] Re:AA5AU Score & USB/serial ports
>I installed a Keyspan USB-to-Serial
>adapter (on COM4) for radio control. I tried to install my Belkin
>F5U103 USB-to-Serial adapter (it installed OK as COM5), but when I went
>to activate it, I got the blue XP screen of death. I tried several
>times but it never worked.
So if the Belkin unit won't work with Windows XP and the other units won't
pass Baudot code, how do we go forward?
I spent at least five hours yesterday struggling to get only a couple of the
ports of a four port serial board working because of the shortage of IRQ's.
I could easily use two or three additional ports.
With new computers with USB mice, keyboards and printers are the IRQ's that
would otherwise be used for these in a range that is available to serial
port boards? Do people really have success with shared IRQ's for serial
ports?
Wes, WZ7I
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