Apple ipads (again)

You mean a DB25, or something else?

My Mac Mini has a USB port (actually several). So when I needed to interface it to the two serial ports on my 68000 SBC, I just bought a

As I'm one of the 0.000001% of people who actually needs a serial port on their computer, I didn't mind forking out a bit extra for it. Hint: the device and software I have will work perfectly well on any other Mac including a laptop or Air. So if I had to go to a site with comms kit that had ye olde serial ports, an Air is what I'd take, along with this cable.

Yeah, most of the software sold for programming car ECUs is s**te.

Serial ports are commonly DB9?

Sadly, not all USB to serial convertors work as well as a discrete serial port. (I'm dealing with aftermarket car engine ECUs which all seem to use a serial port, or an internal convertor for USB to serial, which seems to be as flaky as some external ones)

I never have any problems when repairing them in the workshop as I check things using the desktop with a proper serial port. But for on the road tuning, you need a laptop. Or a very long lead. ;-)

Dave's problem (and I have it too) is that he has a programmable ECU in his car (Megasquirt, right? I have Omexes in both the toy cars) which uses a serial port to talk to the programming laptop, and the software that does that only runs under Windows (or sometimes, DOS!) and doesn't work well with USB/Serial converters.

Inane tripe. The i-pad (a glorified games machine) is laptop sized - semi-portable. It replaces a laptop. Makers found that 10" tablets were too big and then made the portable 7", which can fit in a pocket of your overcoat. Even train spotters can them in their anorak pockets, you should try one and keep your train numbers on one. Apple are playing catchup. The new 7" offering of theirs is dire in performance and very expensive. The Nexus 7 pees all over it.

This brings me to the point of having a cheap touch screen phone (organizes the texts well) with NFC to tether the Nexus 7, so you can access the cellphone network. Then the monthly cell phone rental bills are very low, as no i-phone or Galaxy is needed. What te smart phone do can be done better on the Nexus 7, so no need for an expensive snmart phone.

What you save on a monthly phone contract would pay for a few Nexus 7s within a year or so. So, the Nexus can even save you money. The real powerful computer, pc or laptop, will be at home. The Nexus is also faster than the i-pad.

The Nexus 7 is now in 32GB for the same price as the 16GB - from Argos in a few weeks. That's if you need the capacity of course. The games nuts tend to want the extra storage.

So:

1. A Powerful laptop/PC at home.
2. A cheap touch screen smart pohone for calls, texts and occasional emails.
3. A Nexus 7 doing far better what the expensive smart phones did.

That give all you need and CHEAPLY to buy and in running costs.

In the recent past I was involved in remote support of some serially connected devices. Basically, one serial port on a server to one special box - which then talked over Cat 5 to lots of other devices.

We had lots of issues when sites replaced servers as virtually none in the past few years have had native serial ports. And we actually found the added serial cards (not sure of details as this was done by the sites' IT support people) were very reliable and pretty much never caused problems.

Obviously that was lucky for us!

Tends to be more of a problem to add such cards to a laptop, though.

Tuner Studio for MegaSquirt is brilliant, and under constant development with input from its users.

Only since PCs. Before that, such as on VT100 and their ilk, terminal servers, VAXes etc, and port selectors (Gandalf, Micom, ...) all I saw were DB25s. Mind you, that *was* overkill and a DB9 has plenty of pins.

The first USB/Serial I got in 2001 or so was not very good. When I used it with the 68k board there was enough data loss from time to time to irritate. This two port job:

has been utterly reliable and trouble-free from that PoV. I got the driver from FTDI directly.

Probably about the same time as the parallel port came in?

And of course now that MacBooks have Thunderbolt ports adding any interface one fancies is fairly easy by means of adding a PCI(e) expansion chassis or an ExpressCard Adapter. There's no shortage of choice at the moment.

As I said, Android is for people who have short arms and long pockets. Then they sit around and shout sour grapes at those who use a computer platform that actually works.

He was a tea guru, don't you know...

Well, I quite liked Win311 *if I had to be saddled with a Microsoft environment* - it gave me a graphics framework and some stuff to click on, but not a whole bunch of other stuff that I didn't need. Win95 felt very bloated in comparison, made some tasks slower, and didn't seem any more reliable.

cheers

Jules

I'm quite amused by the Microsoft "Surface" ads at the moment. "Look we copied everything from the iPad 1 and copied the cover and keyboard option from the iPad 3. But we don't have any apps and the OS is a lumbering buggy monster."

More madness.

I did drink the odd high quality tea. Yep.

My tablet PC already has an express card slot and doesn't need yet another bit of hardware to use it. It also has a docking connector for expansion.

Why don't you face it, a MacBook is just another PC. They even run the same software.

My laptop runs apple software just as easily as windows. It just isn't allowed to.

More knobness.