[RTTY] serial adapters

[Tim]

I'd highly recommend adding a real PCI or PCIX serial port card. A 
plain PCI card will be less expensive. Recent Windows and Linux 
operating systems will recognize them and in general your life will be 
much easier.

The USB converters tend to work well if you are really communicating 
with another serial device like a computer, a modem, etc. In a lot of 
ham related programs what we really want is a single bit input or 
output. With some programming that accesses certain hardware registers 
at "standard" serial port addresses it's possible to directly control 
a certain pin such as Request To Send (RTS), etc. There's no guarantee 
that a USB converter will make any attempt to mimic that low level 
functionality.

Tim, N9PUZ


Jim Hoge wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I have a new computer but I cannot yet interface my Rigblaster+
> with it as it doesn't have a serial port. West Mountain Radio sells
> a USB to serial cable but says I need to run MMTTY-EXT to make it
> work. The question at hand is there a better way to interface? Will
> a PCIX card appear transparent and all functions work? I could
> really use serial ports for a few other items as well.
> 
> TIA, Jim W5QM