Radio shack
used to sell a small tester with 25 pin male and female
connectors
on each end, had something like 7 bicolor LEDs on it. I found
mine through
some surplus outfit years ago at about half the price, and find it
invalualble for answering questions like this...
They still sell 'em...I saw one on the pegboard last week. That
is one of the most-used pieces of test equipment around here, even
though it barely qualifies as "test equipment". Anybody who doesn't
have one either 1) never works with async serial, or 2) needs one. ;)
I'll go along with that. I have one, and I use it a lot more than my
fancier RS232 test gear (like a Tekky datavoms terst). It's so easy just
to plug in the LED tester and see (as you said) which pin the thing is
transmitting on, which handshake lines is seems to be driving, and so on.
I bought mine over 20 years ago. It failed after about a week due to the
_terrible_ soldering on the PCB. I resoldered everything and it's been
fine ever since.
-tony