I have seen some Dell laptops where the serial port was disabled in the BIOS right out of the box, but still works under Windows XP. You might want to check the BIOS settings to be sure the port is actually enabled.
George, KA3HSW / WQGJ413 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob M." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2008 8:00 PM Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] RIB-less cable circuitry > Thanks. That's what I was looking for. > > The reason I'm investigating this is that a friend > bought several RIBless cables to program GTX radios. > We used one on his Compaq laptop and it worked just > fine. We then tried to use one on two other computers > - both DELL - and the RIB seemed dead, as in no power. > The GTX thought the RIB was turned off and came up in > trunking test mode. We had to use a real RIB and cable > to finish the job. > > So I bought one of those LED testers for DB9 ports and > found low signals on DTR and RTS, as well as TXD > during idle periods. Starting RSS didn't change the > state of those lines, and as they're the ones that are > providing power, the RIBless cable is dead in the > water. [snip]
