USB Serial Cables

More and more PCs are arriving without old-style D9 serial ports (RS232C). This page is to document USB-Serial adapters that work with Psion serial cables.

Sites with information on cables

Series 5

Videk's AP1103 USB to DB9M Serial Adaptor Cable

[This report originated by Pieman. Please add your own experience.]

Tested with Vista

I bought the AP1103 USB to DB9M Serial Adaptor Cable - 0.65Mtr, stock number: 2499G from Videk Online. The box was one of those unbranded parts boxes, which is why I'm having to give details of the site I bought it from, rather than the manufacturer. It doesn't claim to be Vista-compatible on the box so I ignored the CD and just plugged it straight into my machine. When it asked, I clicked to allow it to search the internet for drivers. It installed as "Prolific USB-to-Serial Comm Port". These are the details of what it installed:

  • Driver Provider: Prolific
  • Driver Date: 04/11/2005
  • Driver Version: 2.0.2.1
  • Driver Signer: microsoft windows hardware compatibility publisher
  • - and the files are: ser2pl.sys and serenum.sys from Prolific Technology Inc.

The USB-Serial adapter had installed as COM4 - I left the port settings as the default, plugged in my Psion, changed My Psion to use COM4 only, hit connect and it worked. So far, I've only tried to copy and convert a Word document because that's all I need but if I find any problems, I'll report them here.

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