USB EQDir for under £4

[yesyes]

That's worth a try, probably with MS "XP Mode". But I'm a bit sceptical as it still needs to go through the host OS, which is still Win7 x64, to access the USB.

[Reggie]

it only uses the host usb as a proxy, so the drivers are still loaded in the guest OS. If I'm running Linux in a VM, it loads a virtual box usb driver for the device, then the guest OS loads it's own real driver.

Edited January 14, 2012 by Reggie

[yesyes]

Ha! That worked.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I already had XP mode installed but had forgotten about it.

I "flashed" a serial number onto the EEPROM using the software Reggie mentioned. Now it is detected as COM21 in every USB port.

[Reggie]

You're welcome Glad it worked, virtual box is fantastic software, some usb stuff can be buggy but in general it only needs to be recognised enough for virtual box to install it's usb proxy driver and then you should be able to access it from the guest os. that way you can keep your windows OS for messing around with day to day stuff and linux for all the stuff they don't really want you to do

[Gina]

Yes, you can usually get USB to work with a bit of fiddling about. What I had trouble with when I was trying to run weather software in XP in VB under Linux was FTP. Tried other progs in XP and had FTP trouble. WINE OTOH is the other way round - FTP is fine but not USB. OK I know WINE is not a VM but does a similar job.

One thing you have to watch when running a VM is system resources which are shared between systems. What I've done is to buy cheap refurbished PCs from Morgans at about a ton (£100) and monitors at around £30. KB/mouse for a fiver or so almost anywhere. You may want a wireless card in the PC if you want wireless LAN but they come with 100Mb Ethernet RJ45 port. And about 6 USB2 ports. They're ex-office computers and are good makes, well built (well, the ones I've bought have been anyway). They came with Win XP Pro and a few odd bits of software installed but no CDs so if you lose the OS you'll need a Win XP install CD. They do have the XP serial number on the case though so you can register the XP OS. Hardware is basic and lowish spec but usable eg. 40 or 80GB HD a gig or two RAM, CDROM drive, Pentium 4 HT processor. Of course you can upgrade various bits if wanted.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Gina

[Gina]

This looks a pretty good buy, higher spec machine, for under a ton and a half, :- Buy Dell Optiplex 745 SFF Intel Core 2 Duo 3.4Ghz 2GB 80GB DVDRW Win XP Pro at Morgan Computers

Might even go for something like that myself if what I've got isn't fast enough

Edited January 15, 2012 by Gina

[Reggie]

I have a core i7 machine, 6GB of ram, about a TB of storage on this machine, never had an issue with resources, I give my VM a couple of GB of ram, 2-3 cores and forget that it's even there depending on what I'm doing. We're talking XP here though, so the resources it uses will be much less of an impact than say windows7 or vista, or probably even ubuntu as that has now turned into bloatware.

Personally I don't have the money at £100 a go to buy another PC for something like this, it's a bit excessive, all he wanted to do was program his cable using XP If you reallly need un-hogged resources, you could look at dual booting on your existing hdd, or get a spare smallish hdd (not 40/80gb, they're incredibly slow these days) and use that to dual boot from.

[Gina]

Ah well, you have plenty of resources there Reggie Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu but not as bloated Works well on old machines. I went off Ubuntu a few years ago when they made some wrong decisions IMO. I have one old machine running dual boot but since I'm using it virtually entirely for XP now I shall be removing Linux when I get round to it. I have a 12 yr old laptop running my weather station software with Mint.

[Reggie]

I only started using ubuntu as a cross-compiling development environment, it came supplied as a VM with everything necessary pre-installed, the whole toolchain, which was incredibly useful as this particular toolchain wasn't run of the mill.

I might take a look at mint though, sounds interesting, I used to mess around on gentoo, lovely OS but incredibly slow when you have to do a full update, processors have thankfully moved on since the single core days

I've got a turion x2 laptop that I will use for astro stuff, and I've got a donated dual core X2 machine that will probably end up as an astro machine too. There's also an unused dual-chip xeon server box in my cupboard but it's far too noisy for its own good not really suitable for our hobby, those fans just aren't conducive to concentrating.

[yesyes]

LOL, yes, I didn't want to buy a machine for that. I've got plenty of old-ish machines and components lying around that I could use. My place looks a bit like the Ebuyer and Maplin warehouses (I work in IT support )

I have now also added an EEPROM to my own modded SPC900. Flashed it with a serial number (00000001 ) and it is now detected as the same COM port in all USB ports as well. Why didn't I try this earlier???

By the way, the EEPROM I used (salvaged from an old PCB) has the following markings:

ATMEL 504

24C02N

SI27 D

I seems to be this 2k EEPROM:

AT24C02N-10SI-2.7 pdf, AT24C02N-10SI-2.7 description, AT24C02N-10SI-2.7 datasheets, AT24C02N-10SI-2.7 view ::: ALLDATASHEET :::

[Reggie]

Hi Chris, those are the same pinout as the sparkfun microchip eeprom, I think they might be compatiblem not that it's an issue, I just happen to have 3 of the sparkfun eeproms sitting here

[Auntystatic]

I've had nothing but trouble running the prolific PL-2303 under vista, usb locks up or I get the blue screen of death, I've tried every driver going, runs great under xp though completely flaw less, so I've swapped every one of them out for the ftdi chip type.

The ftdi is the new kid on the block and the company behind it has gained microsoft whql acceptance, and so will always have up to date drivers, or so the blurb says.

none of my cables are longer than 5m, to get to 10m I use a 5m usb single port hub, you have to use the ones with good quality thick cable, those thin black ebay ones are no good as they provide too much resistance.

If you get the tronisoft ones get the one with the shield connection, to help keep out unwanted signals.

Danielle

[beamish]

My 3.3v usb TTL chip arrived the other day from Asia, so where can I find the driver ?

the other bits have already arrived and I'm hoping to get time to put it altogether in the next day or so

[12dstring]

PL-2303 drivers are found here: Welcome to Prolific

Edited January 25, 2012 by 12dstring

[beamish]

Thanks Dave !

[beamish]

Beamish, trust me I have every confidence you can do this... If you get stuck I'm sure I have stacks of those transistors laying around in my hobby box and could post a few plus the resistors off to you - just drop me a PM if Maplin let you down...

Hya Malc ,I'm about to attempt this mod however I'm a little unsure about the connection arrangement for the resistor & transistor to the WHITE TX wire. Are you able to clarify the arrangement ?

[malc-c]

Hya Malc ,I'm about to attempt this mod however I'm a little unsure about the connection arrangement for the resistor & transistor to the WHITE TX wire. Are you able to clarify the arrangement ?

Hi,

I take it you are following the build in the 1st page of this thread

Just solder the white wire and the right leg of the transistor as shown

[beamish]

Am I right in saying the white wire & right leg are soldered to the resistor prior to the board ?

I think the reflections and resolution are responsible for raising doubts

[beamish]

Sorry Malc, yes that's the mod I'm preparing tho I'll try it without the mod first ( next hour).BTW is it critical which way a resistor is arranged and if so (guessing it is) how do you know ??

Many Thanks in advance

Edited January 27, 2012 by beamish

[yesyes]

no, a resistor has no polarity.

[beamish]

hooray !! Lol

[malc-c]

Chris got there before me - Resistors have no polarity, you can solder them either way round. The transistor however should be connected as shown, with the flat side up

[beamish]

Thanks guys !!

[idbvideo]

I tried the mod at 3.3v but when I connected it up EQMOD couldnt find it doing a search. In fact the COM search locks up the program. I thought it was my lead at first. So I did the 5V mod and still could not find mount and locked up the program. In the end I just selected the COM port, 9600 baud 1000 timeout and 1 retry. It worked ;-)

So thanks for the mod hehe.

[JAS]

I have a lx modded spc900 using a HEF4066b as show here,

Philips SPC900NC uncovered

I am having a nightmare with windows 7 and the serial to usb, would this part be compatible? I amd using a FTDI cable as you have shown for EQmod and this is ok with windows 7.

This could solve my problem.

Thanks

Jason.