For companies dealing with electronic equipment, the problem of dealing with legacy equipment is a very real one. As technology evolves, in many cases the latest products fail to comply with standards set by older gear.

 

A practical example is the old RS-232 port, once very commonly found on PCs to connect to a range of peripherals including mice, printers, data storage and more. As better connectivity options have become available, it has become a relic of the past, replaced by the USB port as we know it today.

 

 

The problem appears when old equipment, such as printers, which only has these old RS-232 ports, need to be brought back into action. This is where Electrocomp’s USB to RS-232 adaptor cable turns into your new best friend. It provides a simple way of adapting legacy serial devices with RS-232 interfaces to the latest USB ports by incorporating a FTDI FT232R bridge chip.

 

Apart from a small internal electronic circuit board contained inside the cable, there are also RS-232 level shifters and TXD/RXD LEDs to visually indicate whether there is data traffic flowing through the adapter.

 

Once plugged into a USB port, you can download drivers from www.ftdichip.com, which should make the US232R appear as a Virtual COM Port (VCP). The port is mounted in a rugged plastic enclosure capable of withstanding industrial temperature changes, and is available in 10 cm or 1 m lengths.