Derby Talk

I have a laptop with a parallel port and I noticed that the racemaster finish line sensor board has a 9 pin female connector on it. Where can I get a 9 pin male with a parallel connector to connect to the laptop at? Our GranPrix is tomorrow night.

Any and all help is appreciated!

Steve

mofan1 wrote:Where can I get a 9 pin male with a parallel connector to connect to the laptop at?

You will not be able to use the timer on the parallel port.

You can use a USB to Serial Adapter if you have an available USB port on your laptop. The adapter will have a software driver that needs to be installed so you can use the timer with race management software.

You can buy these at Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City and some other electronic stores. Just don't get the one from Radio Shack as several people have had problems with using that one.

gpraceman wrote:You can use a USB to Serial Adapter if you have an available USB port on your laptop. The adapter will have a software driver that needs to be installed so you can use the timer with race management software.

You can buy these at Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City and some other electronic stores. Just don't get the one from Radio Shack as several people have had problems with using that one.

We're in a small town and those nice stores aren't anywhere near here, so I wonder if Wal-Mart would carry the USB to Serial adapter??? Now the driver is the next question, is that available online somewhere?

mofan1 wrote:We're in a small town and those nice stores aren't anywhere near here, so I wonder if Wal-Mart would carry the USB to Serial adapter??? Now the driver is the next question, is that available online somewhere?

Wal-Mart may very well have one.

I picked up an adapter at W-M last week, the driver was on a CD that came with it. Installed it at 3:30AM for a 9AM race on the backup laptop. . . lucky for me W-M here is 24x7!

All,

Thanks for the help, got a adapter at WM. A little expensive but we'll see, I'm going to test it tonight. Not sure if there is a CD in there or not. I'll probably have to go online to get drivers if the CD is missing.

Depending on your laptop's OS you may not even need to load additional drivers.

Best of luck and remember to have fun!

Please post a note with the progress and once again, best of luck!

Remember: That which others do with pen and paper can be done with computers with only a bit more work!

Mr. Slick wrote:Depending on your laptop's OS you may not even need to load additional drivers.

These devices are not natively supported by Windows, so there MUST be a driver to install in order to use it.

All,

The race went on without too many problems, I tested out the adapter and it worked like a charm! The only problems we ran into came when we wanted to move 3 cars into the semifinal round, the software was not lettings us do that very well. At the end we ended up doing it manually for the semis and finals.

Thanks for all your help with this!! I'll keep this forum available for next year's race!

God Bless!

Steve H.

mofan1 wrote:The race went on without too many problems, I tested out the adapter and it worked like a charm!

I am glad that your race went well.

mofan1 wrote:The only problems we ran into came when we wanted to move 3 cars into the semifinal round, the software was not lettings us do that very well. At the end we ended up doing it manually for the semis and finals.

The software currently doesn't support a 3 tier race (prelims, semis and finals where you are taking the top racers from multiple groups). It can be done, but it does involve using two data files (one for the prelims and semis and the other for the finals).

Thanks Randy,

That is what we thought also, so we plan on doing that next year.