Never Trust the Manual

[toml_12953]

I have a Sharp PC-E500S calculator with a CE-130T RS-232C Level Converter and a CE-515P Plotter/Printer. The manuals describe the cable necessary to connect the plotter to the calculator via the serial port. I made a cable using those specs and tested each end to make sure the proper pins were connected. I hooked up the cable and tried to print. Garbage printed. I checked the baud, parity, bits and stop bits and they were all set properly. I hooked the plotter to a PC with the parallel interface and it printed properly. I then tried hooking up the three wires from the printer's DIN connector (data, ground and wait) to a DB-25 connector in all sorts of ways. Finally, I got the printer to print the way it should. The pins I had to connect weren't the same as in the manual. If the manuals had been correct, this would've been simple! Instead, I wasted hours checking everything over and over and tearing out what little hair I have left. I've been working with communications equipment since about 1978 and I've never had such a fight!

[brouhaha]

I've been tearing out what little hair I have fighting C++ and library issues in a new simulator I'm writing. Everything causing my grief is fully documented, but C++ and the standard library are very complicated (1840 pages in the C++20 standard, 2134 pages in C++23). So arguably I have the opposite problem: correct documentation, but too much of it!

:-)

I don't ersonally have the PC-E500S, more's the pity, but if it's not too much trouble, if you could make the correct information available, it would probably help other folks who do.

[toml_12953]

(09-27-2023 05:45 AM)brouhaha Wrote:  I've been tearing out what little hair I have fighting C++ and library issues in a new simulator I'm writing. Everything causing my grief is fully documented, but C++ and the standard library are very complicated (1840 pages in the C++20 standard, 2134 pages in C++23). So arguably I have the opposite problem: correct documentation, but too much of it!

:-)

I don't ersonally have the PC-E500S, more's the pity, but if it's not too much trouble, if you could make the correct information available, it would probably help other folks who do.

And let other people miss out on all the fun? Of course. That's a good idea. Here it is:

[Jeff_Birt]

Other than the non-conventional naming of /DATA and /BUSY the table from the manual is correct.

[toml_12953]

(09-27-2023 12:16 PM)Jeff_Birt Wrote:  Other than the non-conventional naming of /DATA and /BUSY the table from the manual is correct.

Yes but I added the DB-25 and DE-9 columns. The pin numbers originally called for in the manual were totally different and could never work.