USB-to-Serial Interface Alternatives

[Josh Adelson]

Yesterday at the WPI scrimmage I learned that program downloads to the robot are much faster going out directly through the computer's serial interface rather than through the USB-to-Serial convertor. I tried setting this up however the DB9 serial interface supplied by Radio Shack does not fit the DB9 serial interface on my computer, because it has two female screw threads in the way (they hit up against the two female screw threads on the male serial interface on my computer).

It seems to me that the only solutions to this are 1) a DB9F to DB9M cable, in which the DB9M end has no protrusions of any sort or 2) a DB9F to RJ11F cable. The latter would be ideal as it would allow any standard phone cable to hook into the micro controller on the robot. Unfortunately, I cannot find either of these cables.

Questions:
1) For people who are using a direct serial interface from the computer, how are they doing it?

2) How much faster is the download time? (In other words, how important a problem is this to solve?)

Thank you,
Josh
FVC Team 78