[svlug] RS-232 electronics help wanted

[Walt DuBose]

At one time, you could buy TTL to RS-232 convertors packaged right in
a DB-25 connector.  Check with "BlackBox" or even Radio Shack.		-- wdd


William R Ward wrote:
> 
> A while back I bought a barcode wand scanner on eBay.  My plan was to
> hook it up to my laptop, and scan all the barcodes of the books I own,
> use the resulting info to look up the details based on the ISBN from
> the 'Net (probably amazon.com, unless the library of congress has the
> info online?), and compile a list of all my books.  Maybe do the same
> thing with CD's.
> 
> Trouble is, the barcode scanner won't talk to my laptop, because the
> laptop's serial port uses RS-232 voltags (+/- 12V) and the scanner
> uses TTL voltags (0/5V).
> 
> When I was in high school I had a friend who showed me how you can use
> 1488 and 1489 chips to do this kind of thing.  But electronics was
> never my strong suit, and this guy and I have drifted apart in the
> intervening years, and I would like some assitance bodging together an
> interface between my laptop (an older IBM Thinkpad, if anyone cares)
> and the scanner.
> 
> I could probaly figure this out, but I'm really more of a software
> person, and I am guessing maybe someone on this list has already
> solved this or a similar problem and can help me do this painlessly.
> Any volunteers?
> 
> --Bill.
> 
> --
> William R Ward            bill at wards.net          http://www.wards.net/~bill/
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>      If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
> 
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--------------------------------------
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They comes bundled with our software.
 -- Microsoft