This turns out to be the tail wagging the dog these days. We've given up and have been using serial port adapters on PCMCIA cards. These seem to work much better than the USB to serial converters.
"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." -- Steven Weinberg
I was shocked when I got my new Dell Vostro 1700 a few months ago and the PCMCIA slot was gone. It seems PCMCIA is on the chopping block as well. I have two different USB to serial adapters a IO gear, and a belkin F5U103. The IO gear works on almost every thing I have except a linmot drive, and the belkin works on it. I communicate with all manner of AB stuff as well as many other things.
Isn't there a new version of the PCMCIA card? We just got a little HP netbook and it has a slot for whatever the new card is called. We'll have to buy a new serial port converter.
"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." -- Steven Weinberg
My new Dell Precision M4300 has a hard serial port on it. I was really surprised.
But have also used the Belkin serial db9 to USB and have no problems with it.
The best devices install into the device manager, if it does not interface there then the software that you run will not reconize it and will have problems
All our laptops are the Dell Lattitudes for the serial port. I also had the problem of ordering a laptop and finding our it didnt have a PCMCIA port but one of the express card ports. It was useless to me at the time. The kids really enjoy that laptop.
