Serial Printer to USB through USB hub

30
2014-06
  • Brandon Grossutti

    I am looking at purchasing a win 8 tablet (non rt) that only has one usb port.

    I need to be able to connect an epson serial printer as well as a usb to ethernet adapter.

    Given that there is only one usb port; is there serial over usb adapters that can go through a usb hub? Or are there better options for achieving this same goal?

    • Answers
  • Isaac Rabinovitch

    There are plenty of adapters that attempt to provide the kind of connection you need. Will adapter X work with hub Y? Impossible to predict. USB hubs are supposed to be invisible to devices (aside from the loss of speed when the port is shared) but some manufacturers are sloppy about that.

    And that's not even your biggest problem. You'll need software to send printer commands over your serial channel. If it's a Postscript printer, you might find some open source software to do the job. If it uses a proprietary printer language, forget about it. The manufacturer has certainly stopped supporting the printer long ago, so even if you can download the software, getting it to run on W8 would be a royal pain.

    Does the printer have some functionality that you can't replace cheaply? If not, the smart thing to do is simply buy a new printer.


    • Related Question

    mac - Snow Leopard Compatible Drivers for Moschip MCS7720 USB-to-Serial Controller
  • Kristopher Johnson

    We are using Cables Unlimited USB-2925 USB-to-Dual-DB9 serial cables, which use the Moschip MCS7720 controller. We have downloaded the newest driver from http://www.moschip.com/mcs7720.php, but that driver was last updated in 2005. It does not seem to be working with Macs running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

    Does anyone know of any updates for this driver, or are there any ways to get the driver to work with Snow Leopard?


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  • Seasoned Advice (cooking)

    There is a solution to force this exact cable to work with Snow Leopard while waiting for Moschip to update their drivers.

    Be very careful while you are making this change. You will need to execute these commands as the root user.

    1. Install the latest driver from Moschip and reboot.

    2. Locate the file /System/Library/Extensions/MCS7720Driver.kext/Contents/Info.plist

    3. Open the file and locate the line that reads <integer>30496</integer>

    4. Change the number from 30496 to 30485. Save the file.

    5. Execute the command "touch /System/Library/Extensions".

    6. Wait a few minutes and plug in your USB cable. You should see a screen pop up that alerts you that two new network interfaces have become available. You'll note that they're named /dev/tty.USB-Serial0.0 and /dev/tty.USB-Serial1.1.

    7. You're good to go. If the software is ever updated by Moschip, it will likely overwrite this change.