[nickjohnson] sent in today’s hack. Mike removed the extraneous hardware, just leaving the UART on this IBM PCMCIA modem and replaced it with a SMD MAX241 ttl-rs232 converter. He added a new end to the original cable and ended up with a nice, finished PCMCIA serial port. That fine SMD soldering is hard to do. Impressive work.
Man, this hack is ANCIENT… I remember reading this when I was back in highschool.
Good hack though, just a bit dated. (You can get USB->Serial ports now, for cheaper than $20.)
Posted at 8:11 am on Oct 27th, 2006 by Alexander
Neat little hack, but his excuse that pcmcia serial adaptors are hard to find or expensive just makes me laugh. He suggests a cheap 20 dollar 14.4 modem for this project, but you can buy pcmcia serial adaptors all day long for 10-20 dollars on ebay or other discount sites.
Some things you do for fun/experimentation and some you do out of necessity. Be honest with yourself and admit you just wanna tinker.. its okay! :)
Posted at 8:31 am on Oct 27th, 2006 by JD
@1: When a PCMCIA modem is plugged in, Windows maps it to a COM port to allow windows programs to communicate with it. Windows simply assumes theres a modem connected to that com port, but you can still use it for whatever you want.
I had actually wondered it this was possible.. and now I know it is! my particular model (14.4 as well) has an x-jack, so i could remove that and fit the chip there instead. this is really neat, too bad theres not more info tho :(
Posted at 8:55 am on Oct 27th, 2006 by Steve DiRaddo
In response andrew, it would seem that the modem is simply detected through the serial interface on the pcmcia card. And just because you can buy a solution does not mean it was either fun or informative to build your own. Seems if nothing else the author will gain a better understanding of how the device works. That is something you simply cannot put a price on.
Posted at 11:38 am on Oct 27th, 2006 by Robert Brown
i did this mod once, kinda hard to folow the directions and pictures.
i had to get the datasheet
For the chip and “start over”
but it works.
i made a FULL Rs232 Mod
Regarding the cheap 20$ modem.
this is a couple of years old like 1999 or 2000
where serial cards where harder to come by!
(specialty hardware like)
if anybody wants the details, they can send me an email
kyQWERTYndal.dk@gmail.com
Remove the capital letters!
/Kyndal
Posted at 12:23 pm on Oct 27th, 2006 by Kyndal
seems Hackaday removes my capitalion. :o)
i just love my “qwerty” keyboard ;o)
/Kyndal
Posted at 12:41 pm on Oct 27th, 2006 by Kyndal
yea, i remeber this hack from a while ago as well. still cool none the less
Posted at 6:24 pm on Oct 27th, 2006 by zigzagjoe
scratch that, that is the site i remeber. old hack. be sure to check out the rest of the site…wicked cool stuff
Posted at 6:33 pm on Oct 27th, 2006 by zigzagjoe
this guy’s website has great stuff!
shame its design isn’t the best but I’m used to that kinda thing :)
Posted at 5:21 am on Oct 28th, 2006 by danadamkof
While you can get usb to rs232 adaptors really cheap, there are heaps of things that still dont work reliably/at all, or go really slow on them since you dont have real access to the handshaking lines, so this hack still has value.
Posted at 5:19 am on Oct 29th, 2006 by Richard
I just found an old (1998) Compaq modem (free) — It is USB connected & USB BUS powered. One of my laptops doesn’t have a serial port, and I didn’t want to spend any money on a USB / Serial dongle. I especially did not like the ones CompUSA has — they require you to plug the USB/Ser adapter into an AC adapter *Boggles*.
I might try this hack, so that I can use my crappy portless laptop on router configs :) .
Posted at 2:37 pm on Jul 19th, 2007 by Pedro Hin
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Just a thought, how do you go from a modem to a fully-recognizable serial port from a software standpoint? Wouldn’t Windows (or whatever OS) still think that it’s a modem?
Posted at 7:18 am on Oct 27th, 2006 by andrew