MASTERSHIFT- how do you program it?

[70Firbird]

I have the serial cable that came with the kit... however i don't have a laptop old enough with a serial port. All new laptops eliminated that and only have the vga port display and the USB. I heard that it will not work with the USB. Is there any way to work around this besides buying a dinosaur IBM off craigs??

Thx,

Chris

[kiwigt]

You can purchase Serial to USB converters fairly cheaply; cheap enough that it's probably worth a try to see whether it will work - but they can be a bit variable in their operation sometimes...

[70Firbird]

I tried that... it's not working. The computer reads the USB, but its not communicating with the mastershift. Any other ideas?? :(

[bigtime]

I tried that... it's not working. The computer reads the USB, but its not communicating with the mastershift. Any other ideas?? :(

Home type laptops do not have serial ports but some business type laptops still do. IBM thinkpads just stopped using them but do offer port replicaters. If your laptop does not have a serial port maybe there is a port replicater that you can dock your laptop into. What laptop are you using?

[out2kayak]

Assuming that you have:

http://mastershift.com/p_offroad_seq.html

If you go to RadioShack, they have a RS-232 to USB cable. Ensure you get the one with the appropriate pins (9 pin male). What your looking for is something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Adapter-Prolific-PL2303HX-Chipset/dp/B00425S1H8/ref=pd_sbs_op_3

As the included cable is female to female and the above is male, all should connect up fine.

Worse come to worse, you can use a gender bender to convert connector gender. Something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-02782-Gender-Changer/dp/B00005111T/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1299639418&sr=1-2

After connecting it to the computer, you'll need the driver. It will come on a CD with the box.

Anyhow, this should be the pin out:

http://www.lammertbies.nl/comm/cable/RS-232.html

I work with old RS-232 kit all the time and the above is what I use.

Once you have your physical connection setup, be sure to use the right baud rate, stop bits, parity, etc. That should be in the instructions that came with the device.

I use PuTTY (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html) to connect to the actual device. Assuming that they have a trivial interface, you should be able to have the hardware connection, load PuTTY, set the COM port settings, then connect to the device. Start the device afterwards and you should see "normal" text output by the device. If the text looks odd, check the COM port settings.

After that, with a solid set of COM port settings, you should be able to use their application. You will need the COM port settings from above.

:cheers: