New cable doesn't talk to controller

[doglaw]

I need to move the PC about 24 ft from the controller - in another room. So, I installed a CAT-5 cable (about 48 ft in length) from the controller to the PC and soldered the 9-pin connectors on ensuring pins 2, 3, and 9 are wired correctly. When I run the shopbot supplied loop back tests - everything works wonderfully. Unfortunately, it still does not want to talk with the controller. Any ideas on what I could do to get them talking?

[richards]

Douglas,

I believe that the 'standard' pinouts for a 9-pin connector to an RS-232 serial port would be:

1

[doglaw]

Mike:

Thanks for the reply. You've given me something to look at. The CAT-5 cable I have gives me 4 sets of twisted pair. The Shopbot manual says 2,3 & 9 are the important pins. Since I didn't know what the 9-pin pinouts were - I connected everything except 5. This may explain why it passes the loop-back test and won't talk to the controller. So, I'll try moving one of the wires to pin 5 and see if that doesn't have an effect.

[doglaw]

Mike:

I swapped one leg of the twisted pair from pin 4 to pin 5 and whala .... communications. Thanks again for your posting.