Model 100
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Serial cable
The ideal cable to go from a PC to a Model 100, 102, 200, or 600, is "9F/25M serial null-modem full-handshake".
That's an uncommon configuration to find pre-molded in a single cable, but one way to find them is to search for "HP Plotter Cable" or "Serial Printer Cable".
The serial port on a Model 100 is wired DTE, the same as a com port on a PC, but with a female connector, unlike any pc.
This is a backwards configuration from everything else today. There is some suggestion that maybe this is actually the original standard, and IBM came along later and changed it by putting male connectors on their PCs, but in any event, DTE ports being male has been the universal standard now for decades.
- Any modem or printer or digital scale or any other kind of peripheral with a serial connection will be wired DCE with a female connector, usually 25 pin.
- Any serial port card or usb serial adapter for a PC will be wired DTE with a male connector, usually 9 pin.
That means that usually you always need some kind of adapter between a PC and a M100.
The easiest cable to assemble from common parts you may already have lying around, is a common 9F/25M serial modem cable, combined with a 9F/9M null-modem adapter.
Here are some ideal cables though for reference:
- This one works perfect for most things, in that it has the right connectors and wiring, without needing any null-modem or gender changer adapters added, and works with everything in the system rom and all normal software, including telcom, basic, and all TPDD clients (DOS's).
- However one thing this model does not do right is rts/cts. This cable has those signals shorted to self-satisfy on both ends.
- No built-in or 3rd party software (with one exception) uses hardware flow control (rts/cts). There is no way to even *set* hardware flow control in TELCOM or in BASIC, and no DOS clients use it because the TPDD & TPDD-2 themselves don't.
- But the hardware in the M100 *can* actually use rts/cts, if you manipulate the UART yourself from a machine language program (or I suppose, peek/poke from basic). The only software I know of that does this is HTERM. So this cable is NOT suitable for HTERM.
Others, probably better, but yet to be verified if any are really "full handshake":
- Tripp-Lite P456-006
- C2G 03019
- Amphenol CS-DSNL4259MF-005
- CableWholesale 10D1-13306
- StarTech SCNM925FM
- Epson CEPS-003BLK
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