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Hey, what does this thing do?

S

starhawk

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Messages
8,908
Found a very strange cable in a pile of other (far less strange) cables that a friend gave me. I don't know what it does. My friend doesn't know what it does. It has a male USB port, on a rectangular-ish molded plastic lump. The other side of that lump is a (plastic) DB9 female port (COM port, aka "that newfangled thing on the end of an Atari joystick" :p ). There is a cable coming out of the lump, with a male 6pin Mini-DIN connector on the end (like on a PS/2 mouse or keyboard).

Here are some (lousy) pics of this WTF cable. (Clickable thumbnails rock!) These are straight off the camera, cuz I'm lazy like that.



WTF is this cable? What does it do? People want to know!
 
It almost looks like it allows you to hook up a keyboard/mouse to a console of some type. I've never in my 30 years seen a cable like that lol. I can't wait to see what it is if someone knows, it's bothering me now lol.
 
The less likely in my mind is that it's a USB adapter for plugging in a legacy PS/2 keyboard and serial mouse - though I find that unlikely since PS/2 mice got to be common before the old AT keyboard connector was abandoned.

More likely is that you're looking at an adapter for a retail barcode scanner - the keyboard of the point of sale unit plugs into the PS/2 port, while the barcode scanner (in this case one with a serial plug) goes into the other port. The barcode scanner simply emulates a keyboard, sending keystrokes for whatever barcode it scans followed by a return carrage. I've used the same thing only pre-USB: you have what looked like a very short PS/2 extension cable with an offshoot for the scanner to plug into.
 
Whatever it is, I'm pretty sure it's a passive cable with no circuitry -- I plugged it in to my laptop (USB first, then through an active USB->2xPS/2 adapter, then through a passive USB->PS/2 adapter) and in no way did it respond.

I've got a serial mouse (no, the DB9M variety!) from a really old system, and I'm pretty sure it still works. I'm going to plug it into that, then into the laptop, and see if I can either make sparks or get my laptop to reboot :p

EDIT: maybe not. Serial mice of that age are not DB9M, they're DB9F -- which means I'd need a gender changer to interface the two. Which I don't have.

EDIT2: I /do/ have a USB->COMport adapter, I'm trying to download drivers for it, so I can see what happens with that.

EDIT3: got the adapter to work. I dunno what's in this cable, but it's either just wires or completely dead. Nothing happens. I may have to risk fingers and try to cut it open.
 
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I'm gonna pop this up to the top again, cuz I still don't know what it is. If anyone knows anything about it (that isn't really obvious) then I would ask them to tell me what they know.

Thanks!
 
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