Re: Log Phone Calls



JP Bless wrote:
<snip>


In that I would have to get a 25/9 pin serial cable to be able to connect
the (9PIN end) to my com port and the 25pin end to the device. Is there any
problem with using this kind of cable... just want to know before I go to
buy one.

Again , thanks very much


Many centuries ago (feels like it, anyway), the serial port on many communication devices was standardised to a 25 pin/socket connector, depending on whether they were Data Communication Equipment (DCE) or Data Terminal equipment (DTE)

Parallel ports used another type of connector entirely - big, bulky and you could never stick one into a serial port

Boo-boo Number One:-
Depending on whether a device was a DTE or a DCE, the serial port had either a 25 pins (female) or 25 sockets (Male) in the connectors.

Bugger it, the standard should have just specified pin OR socket connectors, not both for the two groups

Computers 'transmitted' and printers 'received' info, so the computers had male connectors, and printers had female connectors, and the cable was a direct socket-to-pin affair. (1 to 1, 2 to 2 etc)

Now comes a problem - what if you want to hook up two computers?
Yep, you had to have another type of cable ('cross-over') where sockets 2 and 3 (no pins in these cables) were swapped, and a heap of others were hooked up in various ways so that eventually the computers could talk.

Lots of problems now occurred as to what constituted DT and DC Equipment. I know the medical world of electronics started producing machines that had serial ports that were either, so hooking up two machines from two manufacturers was a matter of looking up the specs and deciding what sort of cable had to be made so that they could talk.

Fine.

Then Big Blue came along

Big, and I mean BIG Boo-boo. IBM decided that a parallel port on a PC was a 25 pin female connector, and has that ever been a wrong decision, as so many people who didn't know what they were doing just hooked up 25 pin-to-pin cables to parallel ports and at the worst, destroyed mother board serial communication circuitry. At the least, no communications.

As you found out, your printer's 25 pin female connector is a SERIAL connector, so join the BIG crowd who got confused

Then came along another serial port standard (RS232C, or was that RS232D?), using a nine pin female connector, and lots of PCs started using these, because they use up less territory on a mother board.

Now we've finally got past my waffle.

Lots of devices still use 25 pin male connectors for the serial port, so electronics companies will sell you a 9/25 pin (er.. socket actually) cable (if you didn't want to make them yourself, and I did or had to, working as an Electronics Technician during the last forty years)

There's your answer - no problems at all. Tongue-in-cheek here (:>

(If *** Grier reads this, he's probably sympathetic, as I've spent the last thirty years repairing PCs because of IBM's decision)

Argusy

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