SWTPC 6800

That quote is often horribly abused. Diagnosis by elimination is inherently faulty. Beginners, and "experts", will often use it to justify ridiculous premises, "because I eliminated everything else", while not having truly eliminated some of the most basic possibilities. "It must be the carburetor, because everything else is new" usually meant that they had not gapped the points properly, or had the wrong firing order. 37? years ago, it took me 3 weeks to get ink on paper with a serial printing terminal and a TRS80, because I made stupid assumptions because I thought that I had eliminated . . . and didn't even realize that there was a bad connection between the serial interface and the rest of the Expansion Interface. Why do you think that you have the right baud rate? It might be 9600, but if it was expecting a printing terminal, then it might be 300, 150, 134.5, 110, 75 In spite of "standardization" (everybody has a unique one of their own), sometimes you run into some handshaking using signals besides DSR, DTR, RTS, CTS. Such as CD (8), CD2 (12)!, RI(22) "misuse of the standard"? absolutely. (using db25 pinout - BTW, a DE9 is not a DB9. A real DB9 consists of a DB shell with 1 thru 8 and 20) It can be frustrating. There is at least one documented fatality from the frustration of serial cabling. Guy took a printer and computer to store to get it cabled; after 6 weeks without success, he shot the tech. Joe Campbell was sure that was an urban legend, so he tracked down the case, and mentioned it in one of his books. I don't intend to ever do it again; I'm getting rid of my ARC Data Tek 9600 DTS-1. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com