I am completely new to arduino, and I am in the process of making my own single sided board. The parts should be coming tomorrow. Well at least the rest of them, I already have a lot of them. Anyways I realized I have a problem. This uses a serial cable, and both of my computers don't have a com3 port. One computer has a printer port, but I don't know if I can use it. I have an adapter that would work to fit it in there, but when I looked at the compiling software it only has a com3 option. What can I do to make this work?
And I want to use it to plug into my computer's printer port, since I have no serial port. Would I be able to change an option in the Arduino IDE to make it use the printer port? If not can I get a serial to usb adapter and will it work alright? Thanks man!
Would I be able to change an option in the Arduino IDE to make it use the printer port?
"Converting" a parallel port to nine-pins is absolutely positively not going to work.
In the middle right of the board is a six-pin header labeled ICSP. This can be used to program the processor "directly" rather than through a computer's serial port using the bootloader. I believe this can be done through a computer's parallel port. This is something typically done by an experienced Arduino user. If you're new to Arduino, I suggest getting everything working using a serial port first.
But, even if you use the parallel port + ICSP to program your board, you'll want a serial port so you can debug the program.
If not can I get a serial to usb adapter and will it work alright?
Yes. I've been very pleased with this...
Warning: It ships with a very buggy driver. Get the latest driver from FTDI (or Microsoft).
But you only need a single serial port not a dual serial port. Something like this is more appropriate...
as far as the com3 thing, i have no clue, i just downloaded the windows binary's and it works fine on com 1 (altho you still need something to convert from the pc's +-12v to the arduino's 0-5v)
