Converting DB/9 serial port to USB

I doubt that you will ever find a converter to use an RS-232 port to connect to USB.  No network connection either?

While I understand your reluctance to open the case, you will probably end up taking the hard drive out of that unit so you can connect it to another machine.

I don't know of a serial to USB adapter where the computer only has a serial connection.  There are adapter's for the oposite situation where the computer has no serial as in most systems (especialy laptops) today.

Thanks, but that aint what I wanted to hear!!!

How about connecting through the para port?  Any ideas?  

I had already thought about ripping the drive out, but I don't have another box to put it in.

Since it is a server, there is an ethernet port, but I don't know what the network setup is.

I might have to do it on diskettes!!!!  Hopefully they have zip on the drive.

Glenn

You can try:  http://www.epapersign.com/lpt2usb0/lpt2usb-features-and-functionality

It is designed for printers however MAY work for your needs.

If such a device existed it would only run at the speed of the serial port anyway so you may as well use a crossover serial connection between two computers and transfer using hyperterm/xmodem.

Your First Best Option is to get the network info from the user.  You will probably need a login too.  Doing thru the network is the least amount of handling.  I'm not concerned about the dust, you can cope with that, but with the problems associates with static and other aspects of disassembling the unit.

Note that max speed on the serial port is probably 115Kbps and the parallel port if you can find software to do it is about 1.0MBytes per second.  An old network card may be as slow as that but Fast Ethernet at 100Mbps was available at that time so it may provide you with 10MByes per second.

I am a little confused.  

If you can log into the system why can't you determine/change the network settings?

Connect the hard drive to another computer... either to the other computer's internal controller or via a SATA/EIDE to USB adapter like this unit.

Whether you want to hear it or not, sometimes "you can't do that" IS the correct solution.

i agree with the above, connecting the drive direcly to another PC is the best and fastest method

BUT since you want another way - LAPLINK has everything you want :  http://ww2.laplink.com/products.html

they transfer and support over Lan, Serial and parallel ports

nobus:
I forgot about LapLink.  Haven't used it years. Thanks.

darr247:
Eventually you haven't worked with customers.  "Why can't you do that!  My brother in-law says that it's no big deal!" LOL

Thanks for everyone's help.  I'm looking into this some more

Glenn

My answer is... "Then have your brother-in-law do it."

darr247:
I've tried that answer and it never works!!!!!!!!

nobus:
I tried LapLink.  They no longer support serial or parallel connections.

The only thing that I can think of is to use PKZIP and throw it on to floppies or maybe to buy an old Iomega zip drive.

Glenn

The only two workable methods are over the network or taking out the drive and hooking it up to another computer.  It takes 600 floppies to store 1 Gigabyte and if you open up the machine to install a zip drive, you might as well remove the hard drive.

did you check for transferring over Lan , as i said in my post?
you can contact them for help, in setting up the transfer :
http://www.laplink.com/index.php/contact/

that should work - not fast - but much faster than floppies

but i also would take the drive simply out  - it's by far the fastest, and simplest way

Thanks for all the help.  There are 3 networks running at the site and there are some conflicts with the IP on this old box.