[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by youngWilliam14

ok, so i found a diagram to convert a usb cable to a 9-pin connector: http://pinouts.ru/Converters/usb_ser...r_pinout.shtml

That page describes something which lets a USB host talk to an RS-232 serial device. The Zire 31 does not, and can not, act as a USB host. You're trying to do the equivalent of using a table lamp to run a portable CD player. With the proper wiring you can connect them, but since the lamp does not supply power it won't work. In your case, since the Zire does not provide USB bus mastering, it won't work.

Many other Palm devices can talk to a serial port without putting another computer in the loop, but the Zire 31 cannot.

If you want a long-term project, you might have fun making a little box with RS-232 on one side, a simple processor in the middle, and IRDA/IRCOMM on the other. Then any Palm with infrared (that's basically all of them), and many Pocket PC devices, should be able to talk with the dashboard port through it. But I stress that it'll be a long-term project, not suitable for this year's competition season.