Well my story goes like this, my old laptop took a dump on me and I have a newer one but it has NO serial ports. It only has USB. So a serial ALDL cable will not work for me. I can't datalog now because of this and I do not have a crap ton of money to throw down on a cable that probably costs 5 bucks to make. I have done considerable searching on here and on Google for about 5 hours today and pretty much came up empty. Everyone that was on my quest has given up and plunked down the massive cash and just bought a cable. I am not so lucky as I do not have the cash. I do however posess the knowledge to be able to read schematics and solder. There has to be somebody somewhere that knows how to throw a cable together to be able to datalog. I know USB and RS232 are different signals and need converting. I read in one of the many sites I have been to that electronics are needed for the translation. My question is why can't software interpret it? Would this be too difficult to program? Any input would be greatly appreciated seeing that I am on a very tight budget and will be for some time. I really need to nail down my tune and was pretty much there until this.

 

I know there was one person, Saar, I think it was that either was close or had a home built USB cable built, but IIRC even he said it would be more cost effective to just buy a pre-made USB cable

Trying to get the software to interpret serial signal through the USB, without a converter would be like trying to plug your cable TV into a component video port on the TV.

An alternative that seems to not work out as often as it should would be to buy a serial to USB converter cable. I had a couple and they have failed on me for no good reason. The computers I have would show the converter cable connected in the device manager, but not allow connection to a serial device, ALDL cable or my 2, LC1 WBO2 sensors. It also seems that any serial to USB that is "proven" to work reliably is about half of what a pre-made USB ALDL cable is worth.

 

DIY serial cable was a no-brainer, super cheap, really easy to build and somewhat reliable. A USB cable is a whole different story unfortunately. The one I use is from ALDLcables.com and works great. It was 59 bucks.
The problem isnt really the hardware, its the usb interface. But the thing is that the hardware cost at single piece rates will end up costing quite a bit, plus I'm not sure if you can get a compatible FTDI USB chip in a dip package(I may be wrong there). If you have to start messing around with any surface mount components then you have to make a pcboard, which if you don't already have all the board making stuff ready to go will be an additional expense.Then after that you still would not have a nice convenient (and most importantly) reliable plug. From experience I can tell you that plugging in individual wires into the aldl port is a PITA and they like to fall out at the worst times.
I'd say if you are flat broke and can find a usb to serial converter REALLY cheap or free then try to use it temporarily untill you can afford a pre-made one.

 

Shooter you Failed, to mention which converters you tried but,
$37 from Moates
&
$30 from DynamicEFI

Those are the best adapter sources, given their experience.

I also have the ALDL.com usb cable, works great.
I would not buy a laptop, for mobile tuning, w/o serial port.

 

It doesn't matter which converters I tried, one should be able to surmise that they were of a cheaper price than the "proven", given the context of my statements. I only mentioned that a couple I had failed to relay my experience. You can also read about other's experiences with USB to serial converters where many other people have also experience flaky connectivity with USB to serial converters, especially when used with serial ALDL cables. I went on to mention that the ones that are "proven" are about half of what a pre-made USB to serial converter is worth, because they are, the $37 and $30 is a little less than half of the Moates' ALDU1 (the cable I use with my laptop), and right around half of the aldlcables.com cable.

I use a home made serial ALDL cable with my PC on my ECM test bench.

It's pretty much impossible to buy a (new/newer) laptop without a serial port. IIRC, Lenovo held onto the serial port for a while, and even my 3 year old Lenovo laptop doesn't have a serial port. The Panasonic Tough Book also held onto the serial port for quite a while, but would cost far more than buying a more readily available laptop, like your basic ASUS, or Dell, etc, and a USB ALDL cable.

A PCMCIA to serial card would likely work best, since you're not converting to the USB protocol, but the PCMCIA to serial cards I have seen are more expensive than the USB to serial converters, getting even closer, in not more than just buying a USB based ALDL cable. I haven't heard of anybody using one and most new(er) laptops don't have PCMCIA slots anymore.

I have wasted money on trying to adapt things in the past, not just tuning hardware, but many things I have already owned, and have learned the hard way several times over, just buy the item that works, with out any adapters, it's usually cheaper, especially in the long run, and there's no "Mickey Mousing" going on, with, in most cases, less to go wrong.

 

FWIW: i calculated this a few days ago...

using a parallax 28030 serial-USB convertor, i've built MAX232 circuit-based USB versions for $20.57, tax included.... granted, those were just bare pins, adding an actual ALDL connector would cost ~$21 since the only place i know of where you can get ahold of them is via aldlcable.com.

it's an interesting DIY project, to say the least. i've had to revise my diagram roughly 4 times since i built mine(after my aldlcable.com version died), but no reported failures yet and i've got at least 3 others out there seeing daily abuse.