I just spotted this, which is showing some good discounts on these USB to RS232 converters.. They use the FTDI chipset and drivers which do a full emulation of the all the COM port pins, so allows use of the handshaking pins as well as the basic data transfer. http://www.easysync.co.uk/index.html?lang=en-uk&target=d13.html#p36 73, Dave, G3UEG