Re: RS232 Cable extending
Try it an see - 50 meters is not a hard limit. You could test with a multi-meter how the existing cable is wired, but to extend it all you need is a cable that connects pin 1 to pin 1 ... pin n to pin n.
Re: RS232 Cable extending
Thanks for the reply. I know it's not a hard limit, and I guessed there would probably be some headroom, just not sure how much as I know the signal quality does get degraded over distance with these cables. I'll pick up a normal cable later and see what happens...
Re: RS232 Cable extending
There are two kinds of handshaking with IBM RS232, hard wire and Xon Xoff.
Xon Xoff are ASCII characters, basically sending an Xoff is the equivalent of, "Shut up" and Xon means "Resume transmission".
Wire involves 2 wires, One end could raise RTS, Request To Send, then wait until the other raises CTS, Clear to send, before sending the data. Data Terminal Ready, Data Set Ready are similar. Ring Indicator is to say someone is trying to dial your Modem.
Wired handshaking is uncommon, but very often people wire CTS back in to RTS and DTR back in to everyone else for instant gratification.
Back in the day the notion was that a fancy screened RS232 cable was good for 10 feet while twisted pair was good for 100 yards.
Re: RS232 Cable extending
If it does prove to be a problem, you could look into either RS422/485 converters, or having just done a quick google, you can get RS232 repeaters/range extenders.
The same google search threw up this supplier, with various options - http://www.tronicore.com/en/rs232-rs...422-converters
Re: RS232 Cable extending
Thanks a lot for that info m_c - the machine will be online tomorrow and if I do have any issues I will look to one of those solutions.
Re: RS232 Cable extending
Well, to confirm, and for anyone else in a similar situation in future, my cable has worked out no problem. I have extended a 50ft serial cable with an additional 6ft and also it runs parallel with some power lines in places (unavoidable) and there are no data transmission issues with the machine.