Gerber GS-15 plus cord problems?!?

[thewoodage]

hey y'all, new guy hear with a problem - Have a GS-15 plus that works fine with the parallel cord that came with it (years and years ago) but we just moved into a new shop and I would like to put the cutter farther than 6 feet away from my computer. With the 30' cord I bought off of blackbox.com the computer can't find the plotter. The cord I purchased from a small-owned local computer guy (who made the cord for me while looking at the old one) doesn't work either, and he has no idea why. I didn't know if anyone else had switched cords to a longer one and hand this problem or a remedy???

Any help or thoughts from those who are computer-savvy (or who aren't, i'm not bias) would be greatly appreciated.

[Just Another Sign Guy]

most plotters come with a recommendation to only use the cord that comes with them, with that said i have had success (and failure) using other cords in various installation situations when i sold equipment. You may want to take the cord to the local shop you went to and have them test the cord that you have and see what the pin configuration is as the majority of the cords that you buy off the shelf are straight through and this is not always the case with what is supplied with the plotter....i can not remember the pin configuration of gerber plotters as it has been too many years...i do have a guess as to what is correct but it would be safer to just pull out a multimeter and test it (my guess is it is pin #2). again using a non supplied cord is not recommended...i have seen longer cords pick up "noise" and send strange signals to plotters, and other equipment causing the machinery to do "unexpected" actions.

[Fred Weiss]

Not sure if it's your incorrect terminology or whether or not you have inadvertently substituted a parallel cord for a serial cord ... or hooked it to the parallel LPT port instead of the serial comm port.

I can tell you this with certainty: All Gerber plotters are designed to run from serial comm ports and will not run from an LPT parallel port. I have a Gerber Envision 375 plotter hooked up to its original cord and two 10 foot serial cord extensions. It runs fine.

My cord is a 9 pin serial cord which terminates at the other end in a 25 pin male plug. This looks very similar to a 25 pin parallel printer cord and this point of confusion is a fairly common event.

[thewoodage]

thank you both for the info - i did say the wrong thing in my first question - i didn't mean parallel, i should have said serial - i'm thinkin' i'll try 2 10' serial extensions and see i that works - thanks again for the help!