Build a Flash Interface for the Cost of a Gallon of Gasoline

[cauer29]

I read through this old Nokia cellphone cable hack. It seems this is a Prolific chip based USB to serial interface, and nothing more.

Right?

There are Prolific based USB to Serial dongles available, I am using one.

If any old USB to Serial interface will work (IE, does it have to be Prolific) why do we have to make anything more than a DB9 to JP1 cable and just plug it in? It's just plain USB to serial, flash is serial programmable.

Is that about right, or is there something odd about that Nokia cable?

Come to think of it I have lots of those USB to serial dongles, if FTDI is the preferred chip I am sure I have one.

There is nothing special about prolific based USB to serial cables. In fact, quite the opposite. The preferred version is an FTDI chip based USB to serial TTL cable, but most any will work. There are reports that at least some cables based on certain chips, will not work due to the cable or driver's non-support of sending a serial "break".

Aside from support for sending "break", DTR or RTS must be present also.

A.A.

[Steevo]

Thanks

I made a simple JP1 cable for parallel. First with a regular diode, then with a schottky diode. They both failed to work on a normal physical parallel port on two different HP computers. They both had the same exact symptom.

I am trying to program a Replay 5000 remote. EEPROM remote.

Can I do it with a USB to JP1 as I described? I think I can. But after this difficulty, well, I am getting humility. This all seemed so simple. Heh.

[The Robman]

The type of cable described here in this thread is a JP1.x serial cable, so it won't work with your EEPROM based ReplayTV 5000 series remote. You need a traditional JP1 cable for that.

[Steevo]

Rob,
The two traditional cables I made didn't work either.
So I dunno.

[The Robman]

Rob, The two traditional cables I made didn't work either. So I dunno.

Yeah, I know, but I do know that the R5k remote is a traditional JP1 remote, so you must have done something wrong when you were building the cables, or something else must have gone wrong. But, I can also guarantee you that if you buy or build a JP1.x cable, it will not work with your R5k remote either.

I may still have some parallel cables in my stash, if you're interested in buying one, I could find one and test it on a R5k remote just to be 100% positive that it works. However, if the problem is with your PC or your parallel port, it still wouldn't work for you.

[Steevo]

I tried on two different PCs and it was the same on both.

That leads me to the only common thing: ME.
Heh

I just got some more diodes, I am gonna try one more time.
I have other computers to try it on, so I can see about that too.
Both of the ones I tried were HP SFF systems, albeit different models.

[binky123]

Is the parallel port off of a Parallel/Serial PCI card? If so, it may not work with the JP1 software. Also, parallel ports can be configured in the BIOS for different modes(EPP,ECP) which may affect its operation. Just things you may want to check on.

[cauer29]

Is the parallel port off of a Parallel/Serial PCI card? If so, it may not work with the JP1 software. Also, parallel ports can be configured in the BIOS for different modes(EPP,ECP) which may affect its operation. Just things you may want to check on.

I've not had any trouble getting JP1 eeprom interface to work off of a PCMCIA (cardbus actually) card on my laptop. I did have to figure out and set the address for the parallel port. I also have a serial port PCMCIA card that I use with my laptop and a JP1 eeprom serial cable (not JP1.x!) and this cannot work normally since RMIR doesn't support JP1 eeprom serial interface at all and even IR doesn't provide any means to specify a non-standard address for the serial port. A little hacking of the exe fixed that for IR, but RMIR is hopeless.

A.A.

[binky123]

That's a good suggestion. In IR.exe, select Interface->JP1 Parallel Port. A pop-up window appears to allow you to select the Parallel Port Address: 378, 278, 3BC and Other.