Obscure Digatron battery conditioning machine

Hi everyone,
I have on my hands a Digatron battery conditioning machine, a large
rackmount unit. Their website is at http://www.digatron.net
Basically, the unit needs to be connected to a PC running the BTS-500 or
BTS-600 client program with a serial cable. The manual that I have
describes using it with a dumb terminal, but when I connect to it with
Hyperterminal, all I get is garbage on the screen. I have tried all of
the available terminal emulation modes to no avail.

So I contacted the company and they refuse to tell me anything unless I
give them the serial number. They told me where to look and I couldn't
find it, so now they say they have no idea what it is. It is almost the
same as the machine in this photo

http://www.digatron.net/de/produkte/european/formation/prod_form_114_01
_more_07.htm

Except instead of digital it has analog gauges, and instead of a DB-9
connector, it has some kind of DIN connector. But they won't help me
anymore.

This is a photo of a rack of these units:
http://www.digatron.net/images/produkte/european/ubt_gross.jpg

I have a much shorter rack that fits only one unit and the power switch.

Here is the page with the software:
http://www.digatron.net/en/produkte/sw/prod_sw_6.htm

So basically my question is can anyone help me find the client software
or figure out how to use this thing with a dumb terminal?
Thanks,
Max

 

Yes, I tried different baud rates, and even different parity
conigurations. I really think that it's putting out some kind of data
for the program that the computer is supposed to be running, because I
don't see any readable text in it.

In article <TPu4qbPdipCY-pn2-skgnXUDurSGv@tori>, asavage@iname.com
says...

On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 23:59:08 UTC, <nospam-me53@cornell.edu> wrote:

BTS-600 client program with a serial cable. The manual that I have
describes using it with a dumb terminal, but when I connect to it with
Hyperterminal, all I get is garbage on the screen.

If you get garbage, it's more likely to be a baud rate misconfiguration
than a terminal emulation issue.

Hyperterminal -- bah!

Sigh.
I keep a W95c box around for this kind of thing, but its version of HT
is 1995, of course. Poking around just now, I can see that it *is*
possible to convince it to not autodetect the port baud rate, and will
condescend to let you manually specify the rate. I suggest you try each
rate option, one at a time, and see if your garbage become more legible.
Likely rates for industrial equipment are 1200, 2400, 4800, and 9600,
with a few pieces still running as low as 300, and a few more running as
high as 38400. Try 9600 first, then move down. 9600 is a pretty fair
standard.

If the terminal emulation is off, keystrokes won't do what you think
they should, and some (legible) chars may blink, be underlined, or
misformatted, but the ASCII will still be more or less readable.

 

[Al Savage]

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 14:38:25 UTC, <nospam-me53@cornell.edu> wrote:

Yes, I tried different baud rates, and even different parity
conigurations. I really think that it's putting out some kind of data
for the program that the computer is supposed to be running, because I
don't see any readable text in it.

Sorry for misleading you. Yeah, I suppose you're right.

--
Regards,
Al S.