I recently purchased an Acer Aspire One laptop running Windows XP Home. It does not come with a serial port. I wanted to be able to program (flash) my Rio Car player with the laptop. I bought a USB to RS232 adapter and voila, it works fine.

Here's a link to the adapter I bought:

http://www.cablesunlimited.com/products/Prod_Individual3.aspx?groupcode=I3274

That's great to know! Whether or not one of those things works with the emepg flash program is always very hit-and-miss.

I wasn't real confident that it would work; apparently all USB to RS232 adapters are not created equal. I took a chance and won! lol

Lucky indeed. I wasn't so lucky with my Prolific based converter.

Does that have 64-bit drivers? I couldn't tell from the web page.

Although the specifications indicate 32-bit support only, it appears the latest driver (provided on a Mini CD with the adapter or for download) supports 64-bit machines.

Specifications:

http://www.cablesunlimited.com/Specifications/specI3274.pdf

Driver Downloads:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

I suggest you contact a Cables Unlimited representative to verify this.

One other thing, it’s labeled a USB to RS232 Serial Adapter on the package, but the driver CD (which supports multiple products) refers to it as a USB to RS232 Serial Converter.

Alternately, one can purchase an adapter from FTDI (Supplier of the FT232R USB-Serial Bridge IC).

http://apple.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/...SB-COM232-Plus1

Cables Unlimited simply packages FTDI's chip in their housing for resale as I'm sure many others do.

FTDI's USB to RS232 Chip:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Documents/DataSheets/DS_FT232R_V204.pdf

I beat this one to death; I quit now! lol