USB (*gasp*) modem?

[Bill Freeman]

Yes.  I've had pretty good luck with the Keyspan HS-19US (I think
that's the model).

But beware of the usage.:

  It works great for exchanging asynchronous fixed baud rate start bit
and stop bit per "byte" serial data streams

  But devices that are actually twiddling modem control signals
instead, say, for communicating with a microcontroller doing a
handshake (with short time-outs) such as my girlfriend's weather
station (WS3610), or on the cheap programmers for FLASH
microcontrollers (like PICs), are unlikely to deal well with the fact
that you can only get one simple minded transition per USB frame (1MS
for low speed, 125uS for high speed).

Bill

On 5/14/12, Shawn O'Shea <shawn at eth0.net> wrote:
> Personally I've had great experience under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with
> the Keyspan adapters (now owned by Tripplite). Like this one
> http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtModelID=3914
>
> -Shawn
>
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:12 PM, Bill Sconce <sconce at in-spec-inc.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 13 May 2012 23:28:05 -0400
>> "James A. Kuzdrall" <gnhlug at intrel.com> wrote:
>>
>> >     I have had several USB to RS232 to serial modem setups within the
>> last 5
>> > years, and none of them worked very well.  (We have 3 computers on
>> dialup.)
>> > I also used a number of PCMCIA cards.  They run hot, and I now have 3
>> > of
>> them
>> > that are dead or partially working.
>>
>> As one of those coincidences, I'm currently working with a piece of lab
>> gear
>> (a vector network analyzer) which communicates with its controlling PC
>> via
>> ...serial.
>>
>> Which works fine. RS-232, nine-pin plugs, even runs under KVM.
>>
>> When I bought it the manufacturer offered that "it *can* be made to work
>> with
>> USB-to-serial adapters, some of our customers have done it". Their wiki
>> filled
>> in what they didn't say -- that not a few of their customers couldn't get
>> certain
>> adapters to work, the drivers crashed, one chipset would not work and
>> another
>> chipset would work, etc.
>>
>> My .02 would be that "real" serial is the way to go if you can.
>> (Fortunately all
>> of my PCs are of such a vintage that they *have* serial ports  [they
>> mostly have
>> floppy drives, too...]  :)
>>
>> -Bill
>>
>> _______
>> Sent from my virusproofed Linux PC
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>