Customer Reviews

Keyspan USB Twin Serial Adapter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This adapter allows printers w/ regular serial connections to be hooked up via/ usb to an imac, b&w G3, g4 or cube. It comes w/ all necessary drivers but you must order the proper Serial cable if you do not have one. On keyspan.com their is a great list of supported printers. Other then the print deskjetdirect for networks this is the best solution for hooking up older printers or non usb printers to new apple computers.

If you need to connect a serial printer or other device to Mac OS X, you're in luck with the USA-28x. You'll have to sweat some details though.

First of all, there are no serial drivers built into OS X. For your Mac to even recognize the USA-28x at all, you'll have to go to Keyspan's website (now Tripp-Lite: google it) and download the driver appropriate for your version of OS X. Install and reboot - the driver is a kernel extension.

That's the easy part!

Next, you have to use the proper software to communicate with whatever serial device you're using. For example, if you want to print using an old Apple Imagewriter with your brand new iMac, there is an open source driver available from The Linux Foundation (google it). If all you need is a terminal emulator, there are some free ones, but I can't recommend any since none are very good. Fortunately there is a reasonably priced terminal emulator called ZOC from a company called Emtec software. Google it too.

Good luck!

I am a software developer for a Point-of-Sale program that is used by thousands of stores. We have relied on the Keyspan 28x for years to provide us with compatibility with the older RS-232 technology. Even today, 6 years after Apple stopped producing Macs with serial ports and replaced them with USB, the computer industry and the peripheral industry lagged behind. Now, there are many peripherals that support USB, but there are still many used and new RS-232 and RS-422 devices that the Keyspan opens up to us.

Serial devices can last for years. We have many many clients who are still using Keyspans.

Even today. We are programming for USB, and we believe that USB is the future, but some of our clients prefer RS-232 Serial and the required Keyspan 28x.

The Keyspan 28x is not perfect. I found that it didn't work on my eMac that I purchased in May 2003 when booting from OS X, but it works most of the time for what we do.

After adjusting our program for OS X or using the Keyspan with older Macs in OS 9, most Macs and peripherals that we support work well with the Keyspan.

I believe enough in the Keyspans that I am selling them on Amazon.

Kaydell Leavitt

The description ."...for Mac Imac and Blue G3" is misleading, probably dating from when those were the latest and only USB macs available. Fact is, it works flawlessly to provide two working serial ports with any USB equpped mac.

I found that I could use my ancient serial printer from my grey G4 tower without even reading the documentation. I could print from any classic application, either running in the Classic environment, or when booting OS9. I was even able to use classic printer sharing across my LAN. The client software just sees traditional Modem and Printer ports, and works perfectly normally.

Note however, that if the serial device you intend to use with it doesn't have any OSX drivers, you'll still only be able to use it from Classic applications. (or 'Carbon' applications which you force to run under Classic) That includes most, if not all non-postscript serial printers.

I have the original serial adapter. Keyspan has never updated their software so that it works with MacOS (9.0 - 9.2). Software conflicts with all peripherals, creates networking problems. I've tried contacting Keyspan to find a solution, but they don't respond to customer emails.

I mistakenly purchased this product to use with an ibook for printing in OSX AND CLASSIC with an old Apple Laserwriter 300. Bad news: because the old printer does not have software for OSX, I cannot use the adapter with OSX! This adapter works easily with my old printer in the "classic" mac OS on my ibook; however, printing is very slow. So if you want to use an old printer with both OSX and Classic OS, forget about this product.