USB to Serial Adaptors
The information on this page is outdated. Rather than take the page down, the information is left here because parts of it might still be useful to some people. But please to not follow these instructions to install a USB-to-serial adaptor for your Dobbytron unit. Following the manufacturer's installation instructions that came with your USB-to-serial adaptor.
Contents:
Of Drivers and Chips
If you just want to get your USB to Serial adaptor installed, you can jump ahead to the various Installation sections. This section ("Of Drivers and Chips") has in-depth information about the USB to Serial adapators that can help when installing to an operating system that is not otherwise listed in the Contents above.
There are many brands of USB to Serial converts, but they
mostly use the same internal set of computer chips. This is important, because
it's the chipset that determines the software driver you need to install in
your personal computer (this is true for both Windows and Mac).
Dobbytron always ships USB to Serial converters that use the PL-2303 chipset from
Prolific Technologies corporation (www.prolific.com).
Windows XP Installation
For Windows XP, you must install a driver for the USB to Serial adaptor. Follow the steps listed here.
1. To begin the installation process, download the following four files to your computer. While you can put them anywhere on your drive, creating a folder to hold them will make the subsequent steps easier. The name of the folder is up to you. "USBSerialDriver", for example, would work. Once you have created the folder, click on the following links, one by one, and save each of the files to the folder you just created. If you are using Internet Explorer, it will ask you where you want to save each file. After saving it, click the Close button and move on to the next file. If you are using Netscape, you'll have to right-click on each of the following. On the menu which pops up, click on "Save Link Target As..."
After you have downloaded these, if you look in the folder you created, you should see four files with names identical to those listed just above.
2. Next, plug the USB to Serial adaptor into any USB port on your computer. When the Found New Hardware wizard screen appears, select the "Install from a list or specified location (Advanced)" option. Then click the "Next" button.
3. Select the "Search for the best driver in these locations" option. Uncheck "Search Removeable Media", check "Include this location in the search", and then click the Browse button and find the folder containing the file(s) you just downloaded. Then click the "Next" button.
4. You should now get a screen saying the driver installation was successful.
Although you have now installed the driver, you don't yet know what COMM port Windows XP assigned to it, so you don't know what to tell your software to use as the COMM port. So there are a few more steps!
1. Click on the Start menu and then Control Panels.
2. Double-click on "System" in the list of Control Panels.
3. Click the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button.
4. Find "Ports" in the list and click the + sign to its left.
5. Find the line that reads "Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm
Port (xxx)". The "xxx" text is the COMM port that was
assigned to the USB to serial converter. This is the port
that you will select in your weaving software when you want
to use the Dobbytron.