[UK-CONTEST] USB to parallel adaptor

[Roger Parsons]

Just a thought on (vaguely) this subject. I have been
successfully using terminal servers to give me a large
number of serial ports, both locally to the rig and at
a remote site. With suitable software in the PC these
appear to Windows (and/or Linux and/or Mac) to be
perfectly normal serial ports, but connected over
ethernet.

The terminal server I am using is a Digi Portserver
with a possible 16 serial ports - available very
cheaply on eBay - I paid $35 for four of them. I use
Digi's RealPort software (free). A great deal of fun
is possible - the remote unit has 3 ports that are on
my W2000 machine, 2 that are Kiss AX25 ports on my
Linux machine, and 4 that just appear to be a very
long (14km) serial lead to the local unit. It is
possible to set all the normal port parameters such as
hardware handshaking, etc.

I also have a Lantronix EPS1 Print Server which is
basically the same thing, but this has one serial port
and one parallel port. Similar free software is
available on their site, but although I am sure it
will work, I haven't tried it.

The latency and jitter are very small on a local
network, and they will work well even for time
critical things such as CW keying. The unpredictable
delays over the internet make them less useful there,
and it is important not to download large files over
the network at the same time as you are sending CW!

I hope that may help someone. I would be pleased to
offer my (inexpert) assistance if anyone goes this
route. I really do feel that these units provide a
good way to overcome the lack of serial ports on many
modern PCs.

73 Roger
VE3ZI



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