[TRLog] serial ports.. an observation

[Dick Frey]

I made up network cables for our annual foray into deep dark Modoc county
for the CQP. Nothing fancy, just three 75 foot pieces of six pair telco wire
with a DB9 female on each end and a junction box in the center which does
the daisy chain connections.  To check it out, I put all three computers on
the desk with the pile of cables and hooked everything up.  Bingo!  It works
like a champ.

OK now, we want one station for CW only.  Something Tree said about Com
ports reminded me that pin 4 is used for CW keying and serial 1 could be
used for keying in addition to network comms.  Right on!  Works great on the
old Zenith 286 laptop.

Just for fun, I swapped the CW-enabled plug to the com port on my company's
Dell Latitude laptop which has NEVER been able to use its serial port for
keying.  But it worked too.  Changing its config file to disable network
com, I tried it again. The serial port was dead as usual.  Hmmmm.

Yesterday I used the Dell Laptop alone in the NAQP CW and serial keying.  I
turned off the beeps and ignored all the frantic warnings about network data
being lost.  Worked great.  What if I short pin 2 to 3 on that serial CW
keying plug.  Will the messages go away...?  I'd rather not risk blowing the
port driver.

Does this shed any light on the nature of the Dell Laptop serial problem?


Dick Frey k4xu@arrl.net


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