A couple of weeks ago I was at Edinburgh Hacklab and wanted to test a USB to Serial converter. I plugged the USB side of the converter into into my netbook and then went about trying to find a suitable Null Modem cable to make a connection to a RS-232 port of the hacklab PC.

I knew the correct cable for the job but the one I own was sitting at my parents house. So I went rummaging in the “adapters of all kinds” box and built myself this work of beauty.

Null Modem “adapter”

It consisted (excluding USB to RS232 convertor) of

• 9 pin Female-Female Gender Changer
• Male 9 pin to Female 25 pin straight through convertor
• 25 Pin Male-Male Gender Changer
• A great big heavy “Null Modem” converter that has been lying around the lab that has two female 25 Pin connectors
• 25 pin Male to 9pin Female straight through cable.

Amazingly this worked and I was able to type in a terminal on my netbook and see the output at the other end.