22 Aug
2011
22 Aug
'11
2:21 p.m.
On 08/22/2011 04:44 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
There were a few "smart cables". Many years ago I used one that was
called, I think, "Smart Cable". ;) It had a plastic chassis with a few
feet of ribbon cable coming out of each end. There were one or two
slide switches on it. I don't recall much more about it.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
The thing that
annoys me is that (as commonly implemented), it's not
symmetical, which means that null-modem cables are at best a kludge.
OK, you swap TxD with RxD, RTS with CTS and DSR with DTR, but what do
you wap DCD with (and yse, some devices do insist on it). Most of the
time you can strap DCD input on a DTE to whatever is also driving the
DSR signal, but not always.
My memory is getting fuzzy, but were there ever any "gender auto-
detect" cables? In other words, one that automatically determined
via active circuitry the connections between TD and RD and RTS and
CTS? It would seem not to be overly difficult, other than for power
supply issues.