Serial Ports and Windows 7

[Chinook]

We recently upgraded to Win 7 and we are not able to communicate to our old Gerber GX15 plus via serial port, we have tried a USB to serial adapter and have changed out the PCI serial adapter. windows lists the serial adapters in the device manager but will not talk to the plotter. We are using sign lab and visual production manager.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

We recently upgraded to Win 7 and we are not able to communicate to our old Gerber GX15 plus via serial port, we have tried a USB to serial adapter and have changed out the PCI serial adapter. windows lists the serial adapters in the device manager but will not talk to the plotter. We are using sign lab and visual production manager.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

I use a CH340 USB to serial adapter to drive my old fax modem on win7 64 ultimate without any problems. Was around a couple of months back... I remember it was a pain to figure out, but via google searching, I found the driver I needed. My advice is to make sure you try various drivers to make sure you are using the right driver for your converter's chipset.

 

[choucove]

You're more likely going to have better luck using the PCI adapter card than a USB to COM adapter from my experience. I had problems at first with one computer using a PCI COM add-on card because in the software configuration settings, it was set to communicate COM1 port, which is actually just a header on the motherboard itself. We had to change it to use COM2 port, which was the add-in card, and everything worked fine from there.

I'm not familiar with Sign Lab or Visual Production Manager, but take a look at your plotter settings and see what port it is listed to communicate on. Most likely, it's not going to be COM1 but one of the other COM ports listed.

 

[round man]

the first thing you'll need to check is to which port windows assigns to the usb to serial adapter in device manager,and the setiings for that port. make sure the setting match the settings needed and required by the plotter and your cutting software. more than likely you need to use the original cable you used with the gerber plotter in conjunction with the adapter. keep in mind the rs232 compliant cable swaps two pins so the plotter and computer can handshake so if the plotter cable is rs232 compliant and it is used in conjucntion with the original plotter cable they will negqate the fact that two pins have been swapped same as if you used a straight thru serial cable extention that is not rs232 compliant(one cable will swap the two pins and the adapter if it is rs232 complaint will swap them back). if you do this it should work.

in other words you can use an rs232 compliant usb serial adapter with a normal straight serial extention cable and or a noncompliant rs232 adapter and a null modem(rs232 complaint) plotter cable,... but not two of the same type,.....