Commodore to PC serial connection

I guess an x1541 cable? Is there anywhere in the city i can buy parts for this cable? The din connector and parallel connector?

Solarbotics bought Active a few years back, both are in NE Calgary.

www.active123.com

Washer - did you ever manage to build that adapter and try it out?

If I remember correctly, cables like the x1541 allowed you to connect IEC devices (hence the 'model' number 1541) to a PC's parallel port. I made one ages ago as well, and it worked quite well for transferring files from a real 1541 onto a Pentium II PC and back again - but that article you show is for creating an RS-232 compliant connection off the User port of a C64 or VIC-20. Typically something like that would be used for connecting to a modem or the serial port of another PC and transferring data or files through a terminal program like CCGMS, NovaTerm, HandyTerm, DesTerm, etc. I know there were a couple of mass-produced RS-232 adaptors for the C64, CMD's "SwiftLink" comes to mind and I know there was at least one other one, but if I remember correctly, these connected via the cartridge port on the '64, not the user port. There was technical limitations on the user port and I believe (again, there's lots of dust on this shelf so please feel free to correct me if anyone knows otherwise) that the maximum [mostly] reliable speed data could be transferred through the C64's user port was 2400 baud - and that may be debatable. 1200 was certainly reliable on this port, but higher speeds tended to have problems hence the move to use the cartridge port instead. The sample BASIC program in that Wiki article with the adapter you linked to shows them setting up the port for 300 baud.

I have tonnes of MAX232 chips though, and probably all the other parts needed to build that adapter you've described... Maybe on the next rainy or snowy day I'll whip something together on a protoboard and give that design a try. I think I'd be inclined to add a cap between Vcc and Gnd to decouple the MAX232... I believe it has an internal charge pump circuit to create the +12vdc and -12vdc needed to drive the RS-232 pins off the 5v Vcc, so having a bit of a tank cap there wouldn't hurt. I'm sure they were going for simplicity, and probably at 300 baud speeds you could get away with a lot... Perhaps that's what the external caps are for between 1/3, 4/5 and 2/Gnd & 6/Gnd. I'll have to pull out the datasheet on the 232 again to see what those caps are supposed to be doing.

Anyway, you'd then just need a null modem adapter and a serial port in some PC or terminal to plug the other end in. There are many USB to RS-232 adapters available, Active (as mentioned), B&E Electronics, heck - even London Drugs probably carries them in their computer section. Not all are created equal though, I've found many which have "cheaped out" on the wires to the actual DE-9 connector and only connect Tx/Rx/Gnd. For many devices that's fine, but the circuit listed shows that it uses hardware flow control, and for that to work you need the CTS and RTS pins too. I'm pretty sure all the Startech models I've used implemented the full 9 pin hardware connections though they were more than double the price of some of the cheaper ones (which didn't.)

I'm curious to see if you ever tried this and what you found if you did.

Cube Inc / John