$100 for a $10 USB cable

[jamiei]

I'm not sure on this, but from what I've read in this thread, you can buy either a serial or usb cable for this dive computer. If that is the case, the circuit you see in the picture above is probably mostly for adapting serial levels from the dive computer to the usb port on your pc. If anyone has ever taken a look inside a "simple" serial to usb adapter, there is a lot of stuff on one of those boards... The serial version of this cable may be quite simple and could be built and fitted with a serial to usb adapter. Just a thought.

 

[Charlie99]

The serial version of this cable may be quite simple and could be built and fitted with a serial to usb adapter. Just a thought.

I think the serial cable already has circuitry in it. The old 1 button Pelagic/Oceanic Data Plus interface cable was originally for the parallel port. It used bit-banging control to drive an LED to talk to the Data Plus, and a tiny bit of circuitry to convert the optical signal from the Data Plus to a logic level read on one of the incoming lines of the parallel port.

This worked for DOS and the older versions of windows that allowed direct control of the parallel port, but not for the newer versions of windows where you can only access the parallel port via the operating system.

I don't even know if the latest computers use optical or direct electrical connection, but they most likely use the old original Data Plus interface protocol. So if one wanted to do the reverse engineering, the best place to start would be to put a logic analyzer on the parallel port of a Windows 3 machine downloading from a Data Plus.

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Being lazy, and valuing my time at more than 50 cents an hour, I just paid the $100 for the serial cable instead.

 

[scubatoys]

I have the same question sort of, Is the sherwood wisdom cable the same as the aeris cable? Looking at the plug that connects to the dive comps they are the same .thanks for your help Paul

Yes indeed... The Aeris Download Cable also works on the oceanic and the sherwood computers. You just need to download the appropriate software, but the cables are the same.

 

[CharleyT]

Yes indeed... The Aeris Download Cable also works on the oceanic and the sherwood computers. You just need to download the appropriate software, but the cables are the same.

I've not found a place to get the Sherwood Wisdom software. Sherwood told me to go the LDS to look at it, they didn't even have a demo to look at.

 

[scubatoys]

Uh Charlie... I got it.... I'm a LDS...

 

[CharleyT]

Hehehe.. I forgot you were a LDS.. Oh wait, you're the one I bought the Wisdom from, that's right. hehe

Charley