I had a long talk today with technical support at Xircom/Entrega regarding the problems I've had with their USB RS-232 Portstation. They said most PCs, until very recently, have had incomplete or poorly designed USB interfaces because it is a relatively new technology on the PC side (more prolific on Mac). They aren't surprised I've had problems.
If you've got a notebook PC that's more than a year old, then you are likely to have problems with USB. As software drivers evolve in the next six months, many of the problems will disappear (Xircom is only on version 1.02 of the Portstation driver).
I tend to think the problems are more on the driver side than the hardware side, since I also have an Orb drive with a USB interface which works perfectly on the same Thinkpad PC that crashes when using the Xircom USB device.
In any event, if you are thinking of getting a USB serial device, see if you can borrow one first and test it THOROUGHLY.....i.e don't just hook it up and see if the lights blink, install the drivers and run a test race with your GAZ display and logging printers attached.
If you decide to buy a PCMCIA card, buy the Socket Communications Socket IO or Dual IO card. Socket Communications has very well-developed software drivers, and their technical support is excellent. As I stated in the previous post, it may take some futzing around to get the PCMCIA card working initially, but once it configures, it will work flawlessly. If necessary, get an expert to do the initial installation for you.
James Broder
james@skunkware.tv
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