I want to connect my USB thumb drive to a serial Com port. I know it is possible to connect serial stuff to USB ports, so I don't see why this would not work the other way around. Would I need to mutilate a Serial to USB adapter, with some gender changers? Please, no posts questioning why I am doing this, and no posts recommending I "get a usb pci card, there like $5".
I don't think it can be done. If you can find a serial to USB converter I'd start from there, but I don't think they exist. Do they?
That's USB to serial. You need serial to USB. It's like saying if I can drive at walking speed why can't I run as fast as my car...
The real question is, what do you want to do? Serial->USB will be tricky, whatever you manage to do, and the suggestion I'd go with is (shock) PCI->USB.
You can't do serial to USB, serial doesn't have the data throughput or the physical mapping in memory to support USB speed. As other people have said a USB host card is the best option.
Why serial can't do it? USB devices are designed to transfer data at high speed whereas DB-9 was originally designed for slower devices such as mice and data recording small amounts of data frequently. Serial controllers don't have the data rate to support USB device, you'd need to slow down the data rate of a USB device to make the serial device process it. So you'd end up with a massive backlog of data. Whereas Serial device plugged into USB just has a downtime between data bursts.
its also the controller type that does it. USB is Digital and uses 4 pins and needs specific instructions on how to communicate with a device. Serial is analog 9-pin with nowhere near the speed, it also cannot interpret the commands necessary to control a USB device.
Bluephoenix: USB is the successor to Serial, there are nine pins to allow for further backward compatibity to different designs, 99% of serial devices only use two pins for data transfer, the same as USB.
@doug - I was unaware of the two-pin similarity. oh well, you learn something new every day. I suppose it would work, given that USB stuff works on PS/2 with an adapter, the speed will be pants though.
So, then should this work? I just need to transfer a less then 1mb file from my usb stick. To get my wifi up, so I can get the rest of my needs via that.
I still don't think so, as serial was never designed for file transfer, but for peripheral interface.
You'd really be best giving us more information. The whole serial USB thing's unworkable. If you're just trying to send a 1 Mb file through a serial port, there are easier ways: take a look here.
