Amiga Explorer Connection Issues

[arongooch]

Recently I acquired an Amiga 2000 and have made up my own RS232 Null modem cable. On Windows side and using the Amiga Explorer Setup function I managed to successfully copy across Amiga Explorer to the 2000 with no problems. I can read the readme.txt on the Amiga and Amiga Explorer launches on WB no issues there at all.

The problem is now when I run Amiga Explorer on the Amiga side and then try launching it on the Windows side I most times get a serial connection error. On very rare occasions I do manage to read the Amiga and it shows it's contents etc but as soon as I click on anything the serial connection error occurs again. I have the same baud settings on both machines and packet size, retries etc. Im only using 19200 baud but have also tried as low as 9600. Im also using hardware handshaking.

I cannot understand how I can reliably copy across Amiga Explorer perfectly and multiple times but then AExplorer refuses to establish a connection on the PC side. I am using a cheap Chinese Prolific USB to RS232 adapter and am wondering if this could be the issue?

 I'd like to also point out I am fairly cluey at making these cables and using Amiga Explorer but this issue I am having has completely stumped me. Any ideas would be great appreciated

[arongooch]

That webpage was the source of information I used to make the cable.

I have built a few of these cables in the past and all have worked well. I did manage to get an older cable I made and can confirm it is not the cable. Does indeed look like it's an issue with the Prolific USB to RS232. These things are absolute rubbish it from what I can see.

Im going to use the native motherboard serial port on my Windows PC with a backplate connector and use that instead. Hoping this fixes the issue.

Also I tried out a newly acquired MultiFace3 card with the same results. If I had my scope here where Im temporarily living I would check out what the signal levels are but Im thinking what you say about the levels being too low on the Prolific converter could very much be the issue.

[arongooch]

Thanks for hints everyone. Really appreciated.

I can confirm it was indeed the USB to RS232 converter. From my experience these things are useless. Perhaps not all of them but certainly the Prolific ones ive used in the past.

I ended up using my motherboards native serial port with a 9 pin rear panel breakout connector and have had flawless results at 115200 baud continuously with AExplorer running in Windows 10 and with the cable I had made following instructions from AmigaForever page. Very happy now