Frequently Asked Questions

General

What shipping methods are available?
Just about anything your willing to pay for! Products are shipped FOB Pine River, Minnesota 56474. Our preferred method of shipping is UPS. Some limitations apply to other carriers due to geographical location (e.g. Federal Express Priority Overnight Early A.M. Delivery is unavailable). All methods for UPS are available.

Do you have distributors or field offices?
At this time our distribution and field offices are very limited.

Are your products available to ship today?
If you require lower quantity (less than 50 units) our units will more than likely to ship out the same day of your purchase.

What payment options are available?
We accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Purchase Orders (International restrictions apply), COD, wire. If you don't see a method here that works for you call a sales representative today at 800-450-2001 to set up other terms!

How do I set up terms for payment?
If your company is domestic, just send us your P.O.# and company billing information and we will ship out your order the same day!



Technical

Do you have any port powered converters?
Absolutely not. The serial port does not supply enough current to drive enough units at high enough data rates (baud rates) for us to bother with designing port powered converters.

I have a power source that exceeds the rated 15VDC input voltage of your converter, what can I do?
One of two things. First if it is possible, use a AC/DC transformer similar to our PS9. If this is not an option you have the capability of extending the rated voltage of the 485-25x or 422-25x to 60 Volts with the PWR-ADPTx.

Do you have a RS485 to RS422 converter?
Not at this time. However, you can accomplish this with two of our units and a null modem connector. By attaching a 422-25A to a DB25-NULL, DB25M-DB25M Gender Changer, and a 485-25E, you can effectively converter RS-422 (4 wire) to RS-485 (2 wire).

Do you have 4-wire RS485 converters?
No. Do not mistake our 422-25x RS-422 interface converters for 4 wire RS-485 converters. While a person may wire our RS-422 products in a multi-drop environment, they are designed for single ended applications.

I have more than one (non-addressable) RS-485 device, can I network them in a way that I will only communicate with one of the devices at a time?
Yes. With the 485-ADR you can network non-addressable RS-232 or RS-485 devices on a single twisted pair!

Your converter works fine up to a distance of "blank" feet, but after I extend the run it stops working correctly, why?
This could be caused by any number of problems, from EMI to RFI in you field application, to open wires. Older or even non standard RS485 devices may even cause this problem to occur. Refer to the troubleshooting section of our application notes to help isolate this problem.

What does the L mean (example part # 485-25EL)?
L designates extended temperature range and in all cases the extended temperature range is -40° to 85º C (-40º to 185º F), while the normal operating temperature for the non L version is 0º to 70º C (32º to 150º F).

My computer has a 9 pin serial port, but your converters are DB25, can I still use them?
Absolutely. All converters are shipped with a DB9F to DB25M adapter for connection to PC's utilizing the 9 pin serial port. You can review more information on the RS232 port on our specs and application notes pages.

Can I hard wire DTR & RTS to your optically isolated converter?
We do not recommend it, but you can hard wire the +12VDC required for DTR. However, as RTS is used to control data direction (flow control), this can not be hard wired as it swings from +12 VDC to -12VDC.

Why is termination so important?
This is a difficult question to answer here. To find more in depth information on cabling and terminations go to the applications notes.