Hi all,
After trying and failing to control FMS at all on my putie through the parallel port, I moved on to the serial port. This was more successful but not reliable. At this point I had to shelve the project as I had no PIC programmer and realized that with XP this was the way to go.
Some 12 months later I had the necessity to program a PIC micro. I failed completely to program via the parallel port, but found of all the serial circuits I built and tested, one of the simplest programmers was the fastest and most reliable.
I was pleased as this now enabled me to learn the PIC programming language, and actually test the code.
The down side came when I realized that I have no serial ports on my laptop (USB’s only). This was (I thought) fixed by buying a USB-Serial converter.
No it did not, the USB converter is fed by only 5V so the serial/RS232 voltage levels are lower than normal. The PIC requires 13V to program! This problem was resolved by an ingenious circuit at the following web site: (http://www.jdm.homepage.dk/newpic.htm ). It works great.
Now that I have a working PIC programmer, I can build a PIC serial interface for FMS. All problems solved.
My question is,
Might it be possible to use one of the old (analogue) serial interface circuits plugged into the USB-serial converter to drive FMS?
Anyone tried this?
Looking forward to your thoughts on the above.
Peter. W.