A dongle dingle

Gentlemen,

I could use some help with a dongle (SIM) issue.

Is anyone interested in discussing the challenge I have via forum PMs?

Regards,

Sam

aka Dennis

Perhaps a brief account of the issue may entice able respondees..and limit others..

Joe

Quite right Joe, thank you.

I was being deliberately cagey.

Here goes; I have a CAD package which uses a dongle before the package will function. However, my three year old PC does not have an RS232 (25 pin) printer socket necessary to accept the dongle.

I can manage with my old IBM and very slow laptop which does have the socket. But then I have to transfer the files into the PC for further processing. It would be nicer to have everything on the PC.

Some have said "Impossible!", but is there a simple and cheap way (for me) to get around this?

Regards,

Sam

Your PC almost certainly has USB, Google USB to rs232 adapter. Cheap as chips.

Why do you mention SIM in this context?  SIM cards are a completely different kettle of fish.

Edited By John Haine on 18/12/2017 07:45:47

I am sure that I had a 25 pin to 9 pin adapter so it should still be possible to get them.

I remember many years ago when i was president of the London region of the Federation of Master Builders I went to a meeting at Camden branch. A chap, who had very little knowledge, was demonstrating the brand new Wessex Estimating System for builders- one of the first. It crashed a couple of times & the meeting was getting a bit noisy.

So to ask a question I asked him if the program had a dongle. He said " What's a dongle?" The chairman(a dry, gruff old builder) immediately piped up" same as a dingle but it dangles", whereupon the chap packed his gear up & left. I had to then fill the last hour of the meeting up as we had lost our speaker & they decided it was my fault !!!

Edited By Sam Longley 1 on 18/12/2017 07:50:14

If your pc has pci slots on the motherboard it is still possible to purchase an i/o card with the required ports.

Ensure that it is a 25pin RS232 (serial) port that your dongle requires as a printer port was usually a parallel port. Most older pc's used 9 pin RS232 for the serial ports.

Also ensure that the card has drivers/ is supported by your operating system.

Something like this should be suitable **LINK** so shop around locally.

* Danny M *

You can get an RS232 to USB adaptor for peanuts, as mentioned above. However, 25 pin RS232 is almost unheard of these days but you can get adaptors easily enough. The same USB adaptor is available with a 9-to-25 pin adaptor for a few quid more.

Must be truly CAD from The Ark if it uses a 25 pin dongle. Time for an upgrade?

Murray

.

Sam,

The only CAD package I've used which needed a 25 pin dongle was an early version of Autocad.

This was late 1980s and, if I recall correctly, the software came on 13 floppy disks at a cost of about £3K.

The dongle was [for its time] a sophisticated and 'uncrackable' device, to protect a high value product.

N.B. The software also only ran properly on some hardware [anyone remember maths co-processors ?]

My point is: If you have a dongle that was crafted for machines of that era it simply may not work on later hardware.

By all means give it a go, but don't be surprised if you fail.

MichaelG.

Before I retired I was involved in using laptops without Rs232 ports to program kit with serial interfaces.

Most USB to serial leads didn't work for some of the kit, due to limitations/restrictions in the particular terminal emulation software used for that particular box of tricks.

From what I remember, it was because the terminal software on the laptop used the serial port in a non standard way, perhaps using odd interrupts. We did eventually find a particular brand of cable that worked, but I couldn't use it on some different kit.

Since your use involves a dongle for copyright reasons, it may well use the Rs232 port in an unconventional way, so it might be a bit hit and miss which lead works and which doesn't.

I'd certainly try an extra internal IO card, if a conversion lead(s) doesn't work first though.

As a last resort, how about leaving your old PC/laptop running the CAD, but network it to the new PC and run it remotely.

Do the CAD publishers have a solution?

Bill

Sam, I think there may be some clarification needed, as Danny suggested. Most of the answers so far have targeted RS232, but I'd suggest checking before you buy any RS232 kit.

Until the advent of USB, most dongles were fitted to the parallel port of a PC. To save space and cost, instead of fitting the typical Centronics parallel printer connector, PCs used a 25-way D-type connector at the PC end - this physical embodiment is used for both serial (RS232 etc.) and parallel communications - so the fact it is a 25-pin device does not mean it is RS232.

Whereas, as has been said above, you can get 9-25 pin adapters and USB to RS232 converters, I suspect neither of those are what you want.

You are almost certainly in the same boat as many who run PC-based CNC who upgrade their PC. If it is a parallel-port device, you may get away with a USB to parallel port converter, but I would suggest you need to identify one which is known to work with that particular dongle before you buy one. Much better, if you have desktop PC, is to buy a parallel port card to go into the PC.

(and don't worry about criticism for using an old dongle technology - although most of my software that needs dongles is USB based, I do have several old applications I use from time-to-time which use parallel port dongles which I could not justify the cost of upgrading!).

Dave

Edited By Dave Martin on 18/12/2017 10:19:33

Dave, what you are saying is absolutely correct, some of my old PCs used to have both a 9 and 25 pin D Type serial interface ports plus a 25 pin D Type Parallel printer port as well (before moving onto Centronics parallel ports)

The difference, as I recall is that, with respect to the PC, both the serial ports were male, with the pins resident on the PC, whereas the parallel D Type was female with the pin sockets on the PC.

Sam, Does the physical dongle have gold pins or pin sockets on??

Also, before expending to much time and energy, will your software run on a later version or windows? It may struggle if it used unconventional codes in conjunction with the dongle

Bill

Edited By peak4 on 18/12/2017 10:38:36

I had an Autocad dongle for the parallel port, I tried it on a parallel port card after the parallel port was deleted from PCs but it didn't want to play, I think it was because the parallel port was not where Autocad looked for it. I lost interest as Acad 12 was already getting on at that time. I think you will need to do more than install a card to get a dongle working.

Mike

Bill - I suspect, if looked at in isolation, the dongle will have both male and female connectors, as most were designed to operate in pass-through mode, and at least one of those I have doesn't have the PC or printer sides marked, it just relied on the polarity of the connectors to ensure it was plugged in the right way round.

Sam - what would help is if you can get a photograph of the port on the back of your laptop where your dongle does work - just the port without the dongle plugged in.

Dave

.

Here, for reference, is the aforementioned AutoCAD dongle **LINK**

http://www.retro-computing.org/?page=item&id=289#mainphoto

MichaelG.

.

Edit: On a philosophical note:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/danlockton/127449971/in/set-72057594105304344/

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 18/12/2017 10:59:23

Hi Sam,

Don't be put off by the chat...

I have a few CAD packages that use similar dongles, from a similar or even earlier era. They are, however, ALL parr-port , 25 pin connectors. The 25pin parr-port connector on the PC has female sockets.

I am pretty sure your dongle must plug to the parr-port NOT the serial port.

If so, your dongle must plug MALE PINS end into the PC 25pin connector. The other side of the dongle will then have FEMALE sockets again, to permit the old 25pin parr cable from the printer to plug into the dongle, allowing printer pass-through functionality.

You can still get parr port interface cards that can plug into the PC, with relevant drivers.

You may only need to know what parr-port address your CAD package needs to find the dongle at, and set the parr-card jumpers accordingly. It should not be to difficult to sort.

USB to parr-port converters rarely work in these applications - I would not spend money on that option..

Joe

The original Autocad dongle would only work with the on board parallel port and not a parallel port on an add-on card because Autocad didn't use the Windows drivers but accessed the port directly for verifying the dongle.

What CAD software are you running? Perhaps there is a more recent cheap or free package that can read the files it produced?

Russell

.

For convenient reference:

Wikipedia on the parallel port: **LINK**

and the AutoCAD dongle [image borrowed from my previous link]

Which demonstrates, I believe, that the AutoCAD dongle was RS232

... unless of course, the specimen has been reassembled with the shell reversed 

MichaelG.

.

Sam: It would be really useful if you could name the software in question, and post a photo of the dongle.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 18/12/2017 11:50:17

Ho, hum - just typed in a long post and got logged out when I pressed 'Add Posting'. Good thing - it was too long. The gist was:

• Dongles are nothing but trouble
• RS232 is moderately horrible. Implementations were variable, the specification changed over time, 25-pin has been unfashionable for decades, and USB/converters implement a subset. FTDI is more complete than others.
• Worth a try but the outlook is bad if you can't get a dongle going quickly:
  • Some dongles are simple; they return a magic number as data when asked. In my experience straightforward dongles are rare beasts.
  • Most dongles are much more complicated; they are specifically designed to defeat licence dodgers with a deep understanding of computers. One technique is to use hardware pins in non-standard ways. A dongle that twiddles hardware lines at low-level may not work through a 9 to 25 pin converter because pins are missing, and is unlikely to translate at all to USB.
• May be easier to upgrade the software to a later non-dongle version, but beware where you get it from. Quite a lot of reputable software has been hacked. If it comes from a dodgy source, expect it to come stuffed with malware.
• Old software may not run on a new machine
• Might be possible to upgrade to a free or inexpensive package that's similar enough to flatten the learning curve.

Dave

It is still possible to build a modern PC with a parallel port using a socket 1151 motherboard such as this **LINK** , the question is whether it is worth doing so?

The first motherboard I used in my current PC had a parallel port (I chose it specifically so I could use my AutoCAD dongle, which was a pass-through type on the parallel port), but I found that R14 doesn't play nicely with newer versions of Windows, so switched to Draftsight.

Brian

That is a bit of a puzzle Michael, I have in my hand a dongle for AutoCAD 12 and it is very definitely for the parallel port pins to computer and I distinctly remember that it was for the parallel port. it looks as though the picture comes from an Acad 9 release I wonder if they changed?

Mike