Does anyone know if I can use/modify a Sony Ericsson DCU-11 cable as a serial console cable?
(If possible what driver should I use on my PC (for windows)?

If its serial it has no driver. If its usb check and see what it comes up as, if its generic it might work.

If you can open the cable up without breaking it you can also see what the IC is inside. If its something that can convert ttl to rs232 it will likely work.

It's a "Susteen Hiro-0422M" and I can't find any useful info even when Googling on that. Some Russian pages that I can't read...

This is the pinout
http://pinouts.ru/CellularPhones-P-W/er … nout.shtml

But only RX will work, unless you mess with this cable pluging the rest of pins except TX, RX to the mobile phone, then TX will work.

Damn that's crazy! So let me understand this.

a) In order to use both TX and RX, I have to have the cable connected to the phone with all other pins EXCEPT the TX and RX pins??
b) What about GND?
c) What driver do you use? (Is it the one that came with the cable/phone or another one?)
d) What voltages is it on the TX/RX pair? (RS232-5V or UART-3V?)

Thanks!

a)
yes
b)
connect the ground to both cellphone and the other device
c)
i use the driver pl2303, present in the las linux kernels
d)
TX/RX are signal wires, so no special voltages, TTL signal levels (uart-3V I think)
e) ghost question
you dont need to connect Vcc to the device (router), just TX, RX and GND, this is an advantage of using a serial usb adapter

BTW now i don't use this sony ericsson adapter, it's really annoying. Useful only when you want to read the serial console (no need to plug the phone). I tried to solder directly TX to the pl2303 IC but still cannot transmit, so some workaround is needed to avoid using the cellphone to allow transmitting.

(Last edited by danitool on 31 Mar 2011, 16:21)

Thank you for fast and precise response!

I realize that you have to be careful with this setup as MY cable does NOT contain the PL2303 chip, but the one I mentioned above. Apparently there are several versions of this DCU-11 cable out there. But fortunately it is easy to open. Just take a hammer (!) and place the adapter part on it's edge of a stone floor and hit it lightly. This will crack it open along the glued edge perfectly.

Just to have it said for reference. Today the RS232 "specification" is (too) loosely used to indicate any type of RS232-like signals at voltages ranging from ±1.8 to ±15 Volts. So it is no longer true (in fact it never was) that a RS-232 cable adapter is only using +/-5 V. See: RS232:

More clearly:

Technology     L voltage     H voltage     Notes
----------------------------------------------------
CMOS  0 -- VCC/2      VCC/2 -- VCC     VCC = supply voltage
TTL      0 -- 0.8 V        2 -- VCC         VCC is 4.75 V to 5.25 V
ECL     -1.175-- -VEE   0.75 -- 0 V     VEE is about -5.2 V. VCC=Ground

Also see:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/UART
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … age_levels

Finally I just got my "TTL-232R-3V3" cable from http://www.ftdichip.com/ today so, I think I'll just keep the DCU-11 as a backup for now, but this information was hard to get, so hopefully this post will be linked to Google eventually!

(Last edited by PopOpen on 31 Mar 2011, 23:54)