I just wired up my docking station with a connector from Digi-key, connecting:

pin 2 of the serial port to pin 8 of the docking connector
pin 3 of the serial port to pin 9 of the docking connector
pin 5 of the serial port to pin 13 of the docking connector (the large ground pin)

Pins 6 and 7 of the docking connector are connected together to take advantage of Mark's AC/Home trick he has put into Hijack.

Here is a picture of the connections:



With this setup, I can see output from the player on the serial port, but I cannot input via the serial port. Nothing is echoed back, and no commands actually get to the player. The settings on my terminal program are 8-N-1 with no flow control. I have car_rate=115200 under the [serial] header in config.ini. Hijack forces AC/Home anyway, but I've tried forcing DC/Car and AC/Home with no success. Lopan seems to be having the same problem as described here.

Can anyone shed light on my problem?

The loopback does not belong on this connector. Instead, it belongs on the DOCKING CONNECTOR instead.

EDIT: Oh wait, that is the docking connector you have shown. Okay, I'll check the other pins for ya.. gimmeasec..

Cheers

Looking solely at the connection diagram you supplied, all looks correct to me -- exactly how SWMBO wires the connectors for the docks we make.

So.. pop out the gold pins from the docking connector, and then reinsert them again. Sometimes they are misaligned first try, and doing that will reseat them correctly. Happens rarely here, but we've seen it a few times.

Cheers

If reseating the serial pins doesn't appear to help, then let us know what OTHER pins on the docking connector also have wires attached to them.. could be something strange there. Some of those pins actually connect to the serial port internally, though they're supposed to be ignored by the serial code.

-ml

Thanks for the reply, Mark. I re-seated the pins, and that didn't seem to help. When I re-seated them, I made sure that the connector part sticks up enough, and that it looked like the rest. I also removed the loopback, and that did not seem to help (it just did not force AC/Home).

I tested pin 5 of the serial port with the main grounding pin (13) of the dock connector with my multimeter, and they are indeed connected, so I know that pin 5 is grounded.

Here is the complete wiring diagram:



Did I do something wrong?

Well, dunno then.

But.. my docks use a MALE (pins) DB-9 connector, for use with the exact same serial cable that came with the Empeg/RioCar player. Are you doing the same?

See, the odd bit is, if one gets the pinout backwards, the middle pin (3) will still be okay, but the other (2) will be wrong, possibly giving one-way communications.

Cheers

Ah, I'm a moron!

I was counting the pins from the BACK of the frickin' connector!! (I also am using a male DB9 connector)

Thanks for checking Mark, now it's time for me to re-wire my connector.

Note for others: If you look REALLY CLOSE at the DB-9 connector (and the docking connector, too), you will see that the pins are actually labelled as numbers 1,2,3,4...

Cheers!