Old fashioned serial, newer Mac

It's been quite a busy week.

In what little spare time I've had, I have been investigating alternatives to the Keyspan USB Serial Adapter so that I can do old fashioned serial communications on a new fangled Mac.

Mostly, it seems to boil down to a slew of generic devices based on the Prolific Technology PL-2303 USB to RS-232 Bridge Controller (I leave it to you to find your way through the maze). There is a lot of documentation on the tech site, but it's quite difficult to find anything directly. Driver writers want the file ds_pl2303_v14.pdf (or later) and maybe the linux driver ld_pl2303_v0213.zip.

The one I've seen several places is is the IOGEAR GUC232A. Some GPS units also use the 2303 part. Like the Deluo GPS if you choose the USB model (also see Unlikely's Deluo GPS article). Deluo also sells their Serial to USB converter separately at a low price.

The problem is that driver support is really spotty. There are lots of people looking for them. Hopefully, OS level device support will arrive. IOGEAR has a MacOS X driver (which comes complete with a warning about the quality of the 1.04 driver down inside the installer package) and I found a modified 1.06 driver in an unlikely place.

I'd originally wanted the Keyspan, but I can't find a Keyspan device anywhere locally (I was annoyed when I found that the Apple store didn't carry it anymore). The IOGEAR device is easily available, and if it doesn't work, I can easily get it back.

MacOS X Hints has a good article about patching the 1.06 driver which also contains information about updating the plist for other devices which has proved useful to some people.

So, why would you need one? Most people probably don't, but I'm slowly collecting a whole box of USB/FireWire dongles and I really do need this one.

Right now, I need to talk to the admin console on a Sparc and I'd like to see how it works with the Xserve. And of course, things just keep coming up which like serial connections and for the last three years I've been stuck.