Basic set-up help needed 1

[Callahan]

I am trying to hook up an NT machine running MAT 6.5 to our Meridian Switch. I have a 25 pin serial cable hanging from the switch which I know to be good. On the end of that is a null modem which plugs into a gender-converter. This end then plugs into a 25 pin female serial connector to a 15 pin serial connector which goes into the COM port. We have had an engineer out to look at it and he used Hyper Terminal to connect up to the switch using all but the last part of the link (the cable linking the PC to the gender converter) as he had brought his own. This was to prove that the connection was good. I unfortunately only have the basic information of the settings he used in Hyper Terminal as it was pre-set on his laptop when he arrived so he didn't have to configure it. The details I have are that he was connecting up using 1200 baud rate, 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit. Everything else is a mystery.
Could any of you give me some idea of what the settings need to be to re-establish that the connection is working fine. As you can no doubt tell, Meridian Switches are not my area of expertise so any help with this problem will be greatly appreciated.

 

[pansophic]

Are you sure that it was a 15-pin serial connection? It should be a 9 pin. And why all of the cables? You can take a standard DB9 to DB25 serial cable and a null modem to connect your PC to the switch.

As for interface configuration, our Opt 11C defaults to 9600,N,8,1. Be careful if you are using Hyperterminal though, it has difficulty changing configurations on the fly (what do you expect for free?). You will probably need to change the configuration, save it, shut hyperterm down and start it back up. Even doing this, you can cycle through the possible speeds rather quickly. Don't worry about the number of data bits and parity (leaving at 8,n,1) until you start getting a response. Even if your port is set for 7,e,1, 8,n,1 will work for all of the even characters (which carriage return and line feed are).

If you see OV followed by some garbage or nothing, then you should actually be 7,e,1. If you see garbage (or nothing) followed by L111, then you should actually be 7,o,1. I'd have to review my notes for mark and space parity.

pansophic

pansophic