Our new laptop to my suprise does not have a serial port. CSI does not have a cable for this, what now?

Alan

Alan,
You can by a USB to serial port adapter cable at your local computer store. We have one from Micro Inovations and it works very well.

Ken

office depot has one - I use it on some instruments.

Belkin, which is a very common brand, makes one that works.

Be happy that you don't need a parallel port adaptor as these generally don't work except perhaps for old printers.

That is all I have to do? Just get this adapter? Plug in and communicate.

Alan

Yes, probably. That's a definite maybe.

Alan,

You will have to rename the port com-4 and I forget how that is.

Someone (Patrick Lawrence I think) posted directions on how to do that in the last year or so. I managed to stumble through it easily without directions several years ago so I'm sure you are up to it.

Danny,
I think RBMware will recognize ports above 4 but you would need to tell the analyzer which port you are using. Where I ran into problems was trying to communicate with Viprint. It only goes from one to four ports. I had to install the drivers for the adaptor and then change the port number in device manager then reload the drivers and I was able to use ViPrint. Loading and dumping data was not a problem as long as the port numbers match between the analyze and the computer, at least for me that was the case.

Ronnie

Alan,

Were you able to get this to work?

I just upgraded to 5.0 and found that communications with the usb adapter would work very, very slowly. Talking with Product Support, we removed the usb adapter and went back to the serial port (nice to have an old laptop this time) and everything works fine at 115,200 baud. Ironically, unreliable communications from the serial port at top speed was my reason for going to the usb adapter.

Also of interest to AMS 5.0 users (not sure if this applies to 2130's but it does to 2120's) is the patch file for loading Multiple Route Lists. Without it, it will load the AP and AL sets for the first route only. For the subsequent routes, the data collector will pick the settings. The patch is on their Website. I'll post a link after I download it if anybody else needs it.

Product Support (they are listening), another job well done. No wait, problem fixed on the first call and the part about the problems with the MRL was proactive. We appreciate that here.

Danny

I am getting a serial port installed on this new laptop (An HP). It does not up or download reliably, and times out. We may have lost a route that was collected as well. FYI we are using ver 4.31 RBMware. I would like to upgrade to whatever the latest is, not sure if that is a good investment.

Alan

Alan,

I wasn't happy with RBMWare until 4.50. I had lots of trouble with all the earlier versions.

If you are going to upgrade, now is the time to do it. CSI is offering some substantial incentives that last until September, I believe.

If you do, remember that you must have firmware Version 7.45 or later in your 2120 to work with AMS Ver. 5.0.