Hello!
I am the Systems Admin for my company, and managing the connectivity between our numerous Mazak machines and the single computer we use to send programs is my responsibility. Our current setup is very old, we still use an MS-DOS based program by Griffo Brothers to store and send programs out to our various machines. I have run out of available ports. I already have one RS232 switch box daisy chained to another... and I would rather not add another one to the mix for a few reasons. I am wondering if a 20 port RS232 switch that I found would work to simplify the setup...
http://www.digital-loggers.com/pdf/ss20manual.pdf
Currently my setup is as follows:
There is a serial cable run coming from a single windows XP computer - on the computer side it is DB9, and it connects to a switch box using db25 on the other end. All of the switch boxes use DB25, and the ports on the Mazak machines are also 25 pin connectors. Once all those ports were used up on the switch box, I daisy-chained an additional box, which is now full as well. In the link I posted above, it is a 20 port serial switch, but it uses all DB9 connectors. I guess my questions are simple - will that switch work, and how to I pin out all the new connectors I would have to make ? The Mazak side would remain using the 25 pin connector, but on the computer side they would all be DB9...
We are using CAT 5 Ethernet cable as the transmission medium.
Thanks in advance.