ADTPro help — #4

Post #4 by david__schmidt

Source Forum	68kMLA
Category	Software
Post Date	Wed, 12 Jan 2011 - 12:51
Original URL	https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/adtpro-help.22061/

Post

Sorry, two different incidents.

Ok, and I believe they're unrelated to each other.

My first attempt was with a Mac IIci connected to my IIe card using an Apple printer cable (serial cable.) The worked fine up until it tried to verify the disk image, upon which it went kaput.

Note that an Apple printer cable is in fact a null modem: the transmit and receive lines are crossed. That's as opposed to a modem cable, which would have tx-tx and rx-rx. When connecting to an IIe card, you need a null modem cable. And that's most likely the cause of the problem below.

My second attempt was with my MacBook Pro using a Prolific USB to Serial adapter and a DB-9 to mini-DIn 8 cable. I bought two cables from the electronics recycler.

Unless/until you really know the pinout, the external appearance (besides the physical connectors, anyway) is not relevant. If you have a voltmeter that can measure resistance, you can check which pins are connected to which other pins. It needs to be fairly close to this arrangement:

Code:

   Apple 
MiniDIN8  DE-9  DB-25  RS-232
   Pin#  Pin#   Pin#    Name
--------  ----  -----  ------
   5 ----- 3      2     TxD
   3 ----- 2      3     RxD
   4 --,-- 5      7     GND
   8 --'
   1 ----- 8      5     CTS
   2 --+-- 7      4     RTS
       '-- 4     20     DTR
   7 ----- 1      8     DCD

http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/connectionsserial.html#MiniDIN8

The wrong pinout is the root of the problem 99% of the time.

I downloaded my Prolific drivers from here:

http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?id=31

That's fine. Chances are it'll work with the right cable. The problem OSX has with Prolific chipsets is that they'll work for a while, but then will flake out in the middle of a transfer.