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tutorials:knittingmachine:ftdicable.html

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Make your own cable

The kh930e is designed to work with a Tandy PDD1 floppy drive. We don't need it! Make your own cable to communicate between your computer and the machine. You will need:

You will need to make some minor mods to get the cable talking to your knitting machine. Follow the tutorials to get your knitting cable going

Change 'polarity' of the FTDI cable

FTDI cables have standard 'inverted' TTL (zero is 3-5V and one is 0v) but the KH930E requires the opposite. Luckily its very easy to fix this by reprogramming the software.

You will need a copy of FTDI MProg (windows only) and your FTDI cable. Plug in the FTDI cable into your windows computer and install the driver that matches your computer best

Please read our detailed tutorial on installing the driver here then come back when the driver is installed

Now download FTDI MProg and run the program

Select Scan… from the menu

The message window should say it found a cable

Now select Read and Parse to read in the cable programming

Click the buttons that say to Invert TX and RX

Here is the wierd thing, you have to Save as… the settings so just save it anywhere

Now you can click the Program button (lightening bolt)

The message window will say it programmed

You're done! Quit Mprog

Rewire the connector

Next we need to rewire the FTDI cable to match the pinout of the knitter. The cable comes with a 1x5 connector, but we need a 2x4 connector

http://www.ladyada.net/images/ybox2/propcablestart.jpg

Use tweezers to lift up the black connector tabs

http://www.ladyada.net/images/ybox2/propcableremovewire.jpg

Then gently pull out the wire

http://www.ladyada.net/images/ybox2/propcablepullout.jpg

http://www.ladyada.net/images/ybox2/propcableremoved.jpg

Repeat for all the wires

:tutorials:knittingmachine:cablesplice.jpg

:tutorials:knittingmachine:cablewrapped.jpg

You're done!

:tutorials:knittingmachine:cabledone.jpg

/home/ladyada/public_html/wiki/data/attic/tutorials/knittingmachine/ftdicable.html.1288639422.txt.gz · Last modified: 2016/01/28 18:05 (external edit)