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Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are?
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New MessageSerial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) seebs
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NetBSD's boot detects two "functional" serial ports with "working 16550 uarts". I am wondering if these have ever been identified. In particular, the machine's motherboard has two little connectors on it, both of which look sort of like the kinds of plugs my PowerBook uses for an IDE drive - or the kinds of plugs someone might use to attach serial cables to a motherboard.

Anyone explored this, or figured out what those gizmos are? I am betting that one of them is an IDE connector, and the other is the serial ports, but that's pretty much a totally uneducated guess.

12-14-2001 23:41:36

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) ranman
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Seebs,

Are you talking about the iaone or two? From the pics on http://www.linux-hacker.net/ipaq/ and from looking at my own IA-1 to verify, I only saw one connector that did not have something plugged into it - and that was the small 10 pin header.
I don't know what is on the inside of the ia-2, as I don't have one, and AFAIK, no one has posted any pics of it yet.
I think that win98 also finds those same 2 serial ports. Sandra sisoft finds a bunch of stuff on the motherboard that would normally be enabled in a standard mvp4 type mobo. If we could easily add an IDE drive to the iaone, that would be great. Someone said there is a header on the iatwo.

ranman

12-15-2001 00:10:12

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) seebs
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If you look at the picture labeled "inside top of motherboard", on the right of the picture (towards the front of the machine), there's a pair of connectors, one immediately next to the cyberblade chip, one near the VIA chip, the Winbond chip (is that what it says? Small square one). Neither seems to be connected to anything, on my unit. The one is directly above the other. My powerbook has a connector a *LOT* like one of those that runs to the internal IDE drive. They have enough pins to potentially be something like IDE or a pair of serial ports.

I noticed that there's no printer port, so I'm assuming the serial port hardware is actually present, I just can't find it.

12-15-2001 01:08:50

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) diepiapaopolopo
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I'm not an authoritative source, but it would seem that the header near the monitor headers is probably just a serial connector, most likely for some future touch screen device. It would make sense to put it next to the other monitor connectors for that purpose.
12-21-2001 00:15:14

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) philzilla
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I can verify that the unused header on the IA-1 is indeed a serial port.

The traces for it go right under the Via south-bridge where it has pins for two serial ports. Sticking a scope on the connector and twiddling a few bits (RTS, DTR) shows that this is in fact /dev/ttyS1 (COM2?). The connector has labels for pins 1, 2, 9, and 10. If you follow that convention, the pins come out to:


1: DCD (DB-9 pin 1)
2: DSR (DB-9 pin 6)
3: RD (DB-9 pin 2)
4: RTS (DB-9 pin 7)
5: TD (DB-9 pin 3)
6: CTS (DB-9 pin 8)
7: DTR (DB-9 pin 4)
8: -- (DB-9 pin 9)
9: Gnd (DB-9 pin 5)
10: --

The only deal is that it is 0/+5v outputs, so it still needs a line driver (MAX232, MAX238, etc.) attached to it.

01-05-2002 12:49:20

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) chriscook
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Great work!

So what's needed for the next step? What is this line drive you speak off and is it's lack going to keep me from being able together an adapter from the Jameco catalog?

Chris

01-05-2002 13:35:19

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) thinker
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Would this mean the RS-232 kit from badflash would also work with the IA-1?
01-05-2002 14:39:59

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) philzilla
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Thinker,

It doesn't appear to be the same pinout as the I-Opener (looking at the schematic posted at http://www.geocities.com/iopener_hack/prefect/index.html). So my guess would be that the badflash serial adapter wouldn't work, at least not out of the box. (But that's just a guess on my part.)

Chris,

The next step would be to get a MAX232/235/238/etc. and hook it all up to make sure that the pinout I listed above is 100% correct. I intend to order some parts somewhat soon so I can test it out. A line driver helps convert from TTL to RS-232 voltages (and vice versa). The output from the integrated chipset comes out at TTL levels (0,5V), while RS-232 voltages are more like (3..25V, -3..-25V). So if you're going to be connecting up to a standard serial device that expects RS-232 level voltages, you'll need a line driver.

01-05-2002 16:32:12

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) thinker
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I don't expect it to work out-of-the-box, but hopefully a design can be made based off of that one.

I have an IA-1 here and two spare MAX232 chips. Wouldn't someone be able to supply me with a schematic, and I could perhaps try making this work? Thanks.

01-05-2002 17:02:23

New MessageRE:Serial ports? Anyone know what those two unused plugs are? (modified 0 times) flash
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Thanks to philzilla for doing the ground work. I’m trying to install a MAX235cpg in my ia-1 using the unused header that is supposed to be a serial port. I am going to use the mod that Prefect is using for the I-opener.
The only difference seems to be in the header pin-outs. If this is correct (this is why I’m posting this) is to double check that the pins are assigned the proper pin-outs. Anyone ever try to install a serial port after this was first posted ? Anyway, I’ve installed a male DB-9 serial connector on the back of my ia-1 right where the power cord would be, if it were on the opposite side. (best free space).

IA-1 serial port I-opener serial port cn-12

1: DCD (DB-9 pin 1) 1: TX (DB-9 pin 3)
2: DSR (DB-9 pin 6) 2: RX (DB-9 pin 2)
3: RD (DB-9 pin 2) 3: DTR (DB-9 pin 4)
4: RTS (DB-9 pin 7) 4: R1 (DB-9 pin 9)
5: TD (DB-9 pin 3) 5: RTS (DB-9 pin 7)
6: CTS (DB-9 pin 8) 6: CD (DB-9 pin 1)
7: DTR (DB-9 pin 4) 7: CTS (DB-9 pin 8)
8: -- (DB-9 pin 9) 8: DSR (DB-9 pin 6)
9: GND (DB-9 pin 5) 9: GND (DB-9 pin 5)
10:-- 10: +5 volts

Hopefully I can get a fully functional comm. port out of this project.
Oh, ya forgot to add that I’m running Win98se on a 10 gig notebook harddrive with the adaptec adapter. Original Bios, (it is socketed). The I-opener bios disables the compact flash socket. It also uses a AMD K6 II+ 450 with 100mhz fsb. I did the resistor mod on the motherboard. Also have audio and cyberblade video enabled as well as a working modem.

Flash…

12-06-2002 10:27:37

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