Just upgraded laptops and have finally had to deal with the dreaded USB to serial adapter woes. I know Paul has said get a real serial port (found on another post about getting a cable to work (http://forum.efilive.com/showthread....serial+adapter)
"Most USB-Serial adapters are not capable of generating the correct baud rate required for ALDL communications. The baud rate required in 8192 baud. A Real PC UART chip controlling a real RS232 serial port is capable of generating a baud rate of 8228 which is close enough to 8192 to allow it to work. I recommend using a real serial port, you may need to get your desktop computer (if it has a serial port) close to your vehicle to test whether the cable works using a real serial port. If it does then you can be pretty confident that the Serial-USB converter is not generating the correct baud rate.
Regards
Paul "
But right now, that just isn't an option for me any more (my old laptop was 8+ years old ).
Anyway, found a Prolific USB to serial adapter, and performing the TTS test, shows that the speed is off .... like 12.7% off (7151 instead of 8192 baud). And yes, this is the same cable, same car, same PCM that everything worked with before. Thus, I am pretty positive it is the USB adapter (already verified COM settings and ports were setup correctly).
This brings me to my question of which USB adapter have people had better luck with? I hate to have to keep trying / returning until I find one that works with my laptop.
I did see someone mention that they were having luck with megasquirts using this PCMCIA to serial adapter:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16839328020
Is it blind hope that the PCMCIA type design is better than the USB ones???