easy-rotor-control and Remoterig on COM1

[KP4TR]

Hello,

I just assembled an easy-rotor-control. I tested it locally on a PC and the service tool sees it and runs test successfully. When I try it via Remoterig locally at home, the service tool does not see it on COM1. It works only on COM2.

I am using serial ports via USB which I have used successfully to control radios using various CAT programs. I was able to make it work with:

Mode-5 - user-def-terminator
COM2 baudrate             4800
COM2 data bits              8
COM2 stop bits              1
COM2 parity              0-off
COM2 terminator (hex)   0d

I have tried using COM1 and does not work.   What is different in COM1 to not work, when COM2 works fine?

Thanks.

[SV1DPI]

see here for my setup
http://users.otenet.gr/~sv1dpi/en/articles/remoterig.html
in general pin2 go to pin3 and pin3 to pin2 in the serial cable used on com1

[IN3ASW]

Ramon,
from the manual you can see that COM1 is a DCE (TX  on Pin 2) , whereas COM2 is a DTE ( TX on Pin 3) . ERC is a DCE, so to connect to COM2 you need a Straight-through/Modem cable.
Hope you find the attached picture useful.

73
Gianni

[KP4TR]

All,

Thank you all for an excellent response. I never realized COM1 was wired for DCE. All this time I assume it was wired just like COM2 and never gave it a second thought. I will rewire the cable and test again tomorrow (it's late), as I do need to use COM1 as COM2 is already occupied with my TS2000.

Thank you all again!!!

[KP4TR]

Followup. I rewired the rs232 connector by reversing pin 2 and 3, but still did not work. Since I have many years of love/hate relationship with RS232 devices, I knew it was something with my setup.

 I tested with a null modem cable I have with COM2 and it worked, so it wasn't the wiring. After dozens of restarts changing values and retesting, I decided to not use USB connection and test with another RS232 cable (Prolific) connected directly to COM1 on control unit. And it finally worked, so the issue had to be the RRC1258 drivers. I uninstalled them (ver 1.13) and reinstalled using ver. 1.17. The ports were reconfigured differently, but that's ok. With new drivers, I tested and it finally worked!

So 2 problems. One was wiring of COM1, and second, a reinstall of drivers. And now I can continue with wiring to my rotator.

73!

[IN3ASW]

Ramon,
glad to hear you got it working.

BTW, reversing Pin 2 and 3 isn't enough for a null modem cable. You have to do it also for RTS & CTS (Pin 7,8) and DSR & DTR (Pin 6,4)

73
Gianni IN3ASW

[KP4TR]

Thanks. The ez-rotor-control only uses 3 pins (tx, rx, ground).

[SV1DPI]

my web page as mentioned above, does not work anymore... Now you can find the same content at http://www.qsl.net/sv1dpi/en/articles/remoterig.html
73 Kostas sv1dpi