80-Bus News

The serial interface is a simple and convenient way to connect together computers, VDU terminals, modems, acoustic couplers, printers and many other devices. The RS232 or V24 standard is universal and works very well at speeds of at least 9600 bps. The hardware designer has only to incorporate a UART on a board, and a few wires to a 25 pin connector, and the cost is very low. The software needed is very simple, and nothing can go wrong!

But anyone who has tried to plug together two computers using the RS232 link has probably experienced problems. The difficulty is that the standard is intended for the connection of terminals, such as VDUs or printer terminals, to a host computer, or to a modem linked to a host computer. But is a microcomputer a terminal or a host? When linked to a printer it is clearly the host, but when linked to a modem it is a terminal. The connections for hosts and terminals are completely different, and this is where the problems start.

This article tries to explain how to persuade all these devices to talk to each other using RS232, and how to wire up the plugs for all possible cases.

The first problem is that there are two types of 25 pin connector, one male and the other female. Unfortunately most manufacturers are now so confused that they seem to randomly fit male or female connectors to their computers. In fact Gemini have got rather confused themselves, as you will see. A general rule is that hosts should have female sockets that need a cable with a male plug, and terminals should have male sockets that need a cable with a female plug. Another confusing fact is that the sex of a plug is determined by the 25 tiny pins and not by the shape of the entire plug. Also the pin numbering is forwards on one type and in reverse on the other, as you would expect. The pin numbers can usually be read near the pins, if you have good eyesight.

The normal RS232 connecting lead consists of a male plug at the host end and a female plug at the terminal end. The cable links pins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 20 to the same pins at the other end. This cable can be used to link modems to terminals, or computers to printers. This assumes that neither manufacturer got confused. If you try this lead with a Gemini Galaxy, it may work, but you are taking a slight risk, because the socket on the Galaxy is wired up partly as a host and partly as a terminal.

Connections to the Galaxy serial socket

Now this is correct for a host, and since it is a host type socket, so far so good.

Now these look correct, and one can sympathise with the designer for deciding to connect these up to the corresponding lines from the UART. But UART manuals for some reason always assume that you are building a terminal and never a host. In fact if you are connecting to a printer, pins 4 and 20 carry signals from the printer, and pins 5, 6 and 8 are expecting to receive signals