RS-232 serial port required on Dell XPS laptops

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Does anyone know of a way to provide serial port support to XPS laptops that only have USB and USB-C ports?  I have tried a CableCreation USB to RS232 cable but have been unable to install drivers that will work with my hardware I need to connect.  I get a message “no serial port found”

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What about these?

https://www.usconverters.com/usb-serial-rs232-adapters

 

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Mike,

These appear to be top of line products.  I will give one of them a try.  I am returning the CableCreations USB_RS-232 cable.  Thanks very much.

Barry

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It is possible you are using very old software that doesn’t like the emulated serial ports.

Have you tested the serial ports can be seen?
Open a Command Prompt and type: mode com1:9600,n,8,1
This will attempt to set your com 1 port to a speed of 9600, no parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit.

cheers, Paul

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Paul,

The interesting thing is that I have been using a CableCreation USB to RS232 cable on this Windows 7 computer since 2018.  I have the drivers installed for that cable.  I left the cable at a remote location last month and thought it would be simple to just purchase another from Amazon.  The new cable actually appears to be better quality (slightly larger diameter, more robust cable), but the old drivers don’t work and the drivers on the CableCreation website were compressed in a RAR file.  I am not having any success extracting the driver executable from the RAR file with either 7-zip or WinRAR and so cannot install new drivers.  I will test the command line instruction you sent and see what it tells me.  The previous installation was seamless, although it may have been using COM3.  Thanks for your help.  I think I will just purchase a better quality converter as Mike suggested above.

Barry

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I’m not surprised the old drivers don’t work, the chipset will have changed.

I had no trouble opening the drivers from the RAR file using 7-zip.

What issues did you have?

cheers, Paul

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Let me take a guess, the newer drivers don’t work. Maybe you need to keep windows from installing newer drivers and use older w7 drivers. I can not locate references, but there was a problem with knock off chips and the newer drivers.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I use an old Radio Shack USB -> DB9 RS232 adapter. The newer drivers offered through Windows Update do not work. I have had to use the 2010 drivers (and I keep a copy of them in multiple places b/c I may not be able to find them again). And the COM Port it uses can change depending on what devices have been used in the USB Port previously (like what happens with drive letters when a device is plugged in).

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geekdom

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PKCano,

Thanks for that reminder.  I have the same philosophy (and problems with finding) on old drivers/software.  I have been burned by MS and Dell in the past.

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