USB to DB9--Bad? How to test? 1

[webrabbit]

I purchased a USB to DB9 converter. I installed the driver, when I plug it in Windows recognizes it. But when I plug my Palm Pilot into it and try to synchronize, it doesn't.

Is there any way to test such a cable?

 

[Noway2]

On the DB 9, if you carefully short pins 2 and 3 you will connect the receive and transmit lines. A paperclip works well for this if you have a connector with female pins. You can use a terminal program such as hyperterm and type on the keyboard. If the connection is working, you will see what you type.

In the terminal program, simply select the comm port associated with your USB based "serial" port. Hyperterm has a few bugs in it though and you may want to use another program such as teraterm. The baud rate, parity, etc don't really matter for this test. If you use hyperterm, you may need to do the following:

At the bottom of the screen look for it to say "Auto detect" "Auto detect". Then after you establish you connection, click on the little phone icon to disconnect. Select, file -> properties. Select configure in the pop up. Click on Ok, twice to close the windows. You will be returned to the terminal window and the right hand Auto detect will now display the information such as 2400-8-N-1 corresponding to the baud, parity, etc. Click on the phone (call) to reconnect. Hyperterminal should now allow you to do the type test.