Outdoor Adventure USA

I have fought and fought to find a USB to serial converter that worked well with my computer to radio interfaces. Been messing with it for about a year now. The adapters I have tried would always time out and ask me to restart the software or get confused as to which port the device was hooked up to. I finally called the Candy Store today and they gave me some good advice. They carry two brands of these adapters. One is made by MFJ and the other is made by RT Systems. The highly recommended the RT Systems adapter and surprisingly it was the cheapest of the two. After installing the drivers for the adapter into my Vista operating system, it is working flawlessly. I haven't tried communicating with the TNC yet but I am confident it will work because all my issues encountered for the other operations that gave me problems have cleared up. Once installed it calls itself a "true serial port". I wish i had another one of these to see how they would interact by running more than one on the same computer with multiple USB ports. I don't have a problem with needing that ability right now but if I ever want to start doing AirMail and interfacing with my HF radio too, it might come down to that.

OLLIE wrote:I have fought and fought to find a USB to serial converter that worked well with my computer to radio interfaces. Been messing with it for about a year now. The adapters I have tried would always time out and ask me to restart the software or get confused as to which port the device was hooked up to. I finally called the Candy Store today and they gave me some good advice. They carry two brands of these adapters. One is made by MFJ and the other is made by RT Systems. The highly recommended the RT Systems adapter and surprisingly it was the cheapest of the two. After installing the drivers for the adapter into my Vista operating system, it is working flawlessly. I haven't tried communicating with the TNC yet but I am confident it will work because all my issues encountered for the other operations that gave me problems have cleared up. Once installed it calls itself a "true serial port". I wish i had another one of these to see how they would interact by running more than one on the same computer with multiple USB ports. I don't have a problem with needing that ability right now but if I ever want to start doing AirMail and interfacing with my HF radio too, it might come down to that.

I've been using generic USB to serial adapters for years without issues....but I never used Vista, so maybe that's been the problem for you...in XP and Win 7, across various laptops, no issues....I hope the RT systems unit fixes your problem...

Ollie:

Before I ordered my laptop with serial ports, I was always having fits trying to get a USB to serial adapter to work properly. I purchased the RT systems adapter a couple of years ago and for programming and saving settings, it worked well.

If you are planning to do Airmail, there are three models of Pactor controllers available. Only the middle level is USB equipped. The other two both have serial connectors.

DaveK wrote:Ollie:

Before I ordered my laptop with serial ports, I was always having fits trying to get a USB to serial adapter to work properly. I purchased the RT systems adapter a couple of years ago and for programming and saving settings, it worked well.

If you are planning to do Airmail, there are three models of Pactor controllers available. Only the middle level is USB equipped. The other two both have serial connectors.

Thanks Dave. I'll keep that in mind. First thing I need to do is win the lottery though.

I recently bought the RIGtalk USB to radio control interface. It is cable and drivers, no software, but plugs directly into the radio and USB. No adapters. It works well with Ham Radio Deluxe and is compatible with the Tigertronics SignaLink USB soundcard interface, which I am using for the low buck HF email. I thought the Winmor software would use the SignaLink USB to set the radio freq. for coms with a mail server, but it didn't until I got the RIGtalk cable. Works great now. I prefer to buy native USB cables and avoid serial if possible. I have two USB to serial adapters for GPS interface that work well in XP.