The UCAB232 cable

Clever USB to Serial Cable

Most off-the-shelf USB to serial cables are fine for home users as they appear as a Virtual Com Port without any fuss and bother. But what happens if you are an engineer who wants more control?

Finding any technical information about standard cables is almost impossible, so they are really difficult to customize for your application. This is where our new UCAB232 cable provides a solution.

The UCAB232 cable uses a FTDI USB chip, rather than the cheaper and simpler devices found in standard cables, which gives the engineer a series of benefits. To start with, drivers are available for a much wider range of operating systems, including all PC Windows and MAC platforms, but in addition, drivers are also available for Linux and CE.NET running on ARM, x86 and other processors.

As well as this wider range of drivers, another advantage of using the FTDI device is the excellent FAQ section, code examples and technical support available on the FDTI web site (www.ftdichip.com). Having struggled to find any information on standard cables, this comes as a welcome relief to any engineer.

Further benefits include the ability to add your own VID and PID numbers, and identification string to the cable. For the less technically minded, this means that when Windows finds the new hardware, it can display your own message and company name, rather than some generic identifier or the dreaded “Unknown Device” message.

So this cable gives more control over the USB messages. It also gives more control over the Serial Communications for those who need it. As well as giving access to all the control lines (RTS/CTS, DTR/DSR/DCD, RI) for full hardware handshaking, it also has hardware support for XON/XOFF data transfer methods. A 384 byte Serial to USB buffer, and 128 byte USB to Serial buffer help to smooth out communications and avoid buffer overruns and similar problems often encountered when communicating with slower serial devices.

Obviously, the cable has all the features of standard adapters, including high data transfer rates of up to 500 Kbaud, USB 2.0 compatibility and it is self powered from the USB bus. This cable is the ideal solution for engineers everywhere.

For more information, see
http://www.kanda.com/products/Kanda/UCAB232.html

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