Switching Ports Remotely Optional | Black Box SW721A-R4, SW722A-R4

CHAPTER 4: Operation: Hardware and Keyboard Commands

4.4.2SWITCHING PORTS REMOTELY (OPTIONAL)

To switch ports on a ServSwitch from a remote computer or terminal attached to the Switch’s RS-232 port, take these steps:

1.Set your computer for serial communication at 9600 bps, no parity, 8 data bits, and 1 stop bit.

2.To switch the ServSwitch to a different port, use a terminal-emulation program and type or send the desired port number followed by [Enter] (a return).

NOTES

If you type or send a “?” (question mark) rather than a port number, the single or master Serv unit will send the number of the currenty selected port minus one back to the remote computer or terminal—as an 8-bit binary byte. For example, if you currently have port 1 selected, the Switch will respond to “?” with the byte “00000000” (binary zero); if you have port 3 selected, the Switch will respond with “00000010” (binary two); and so on. You must be at some kind of prompt or screen capable of displaying serially received text characters in order to see the Switch’s response.

Of course, because most terminal emulators and similar programs will interpret these values as ASCII codes, they will try to display the corresponding ASCII characters instead of decimal numbers; and because binary zero through binary thirty-one are control codes in ASCII, if you’re running the terminal emulator on an IBM PC you will probably see the port numbers displayed as odd text-graphics characters (smiley faces, hearts, etc.) that remain in the PC’s custom character set as relics of the graphics-poor days when the PC was invented. You will probably need an IBM PC ASCII-to-decimal translation table to visually identify which port numbers these displayed characters stand for.

It is also possible to write a program to run on the computer attached to the Switch’s serial port that sends “?” to determine the currently selected port and sends port numbers to switch to desired ports. If you do so, however, there’s an important fact to keep in mind. Even though the Switch will respond to “?” with pure binary values, your program will have to send each digit of each port number (as well as the question-mark and [Enter] characters) to the Switch the way a terminal emulator would: as ASCII codes. For example:

•To query the Switch, send it the binary value “00111111” (hex 63), the code for the ASCII “?” character, followed by the binary value “00001101” (hex 13), the code for the ASCII [CR] carriage-return character.

•To switch to port 1, send the Switch the binary value “00110001” (hex 31), the code for the ASCII “1” character, again followed by the carriage-return character.

•To switch to port 25, send the Switch “00110010” (hex 32, ASCII “2”), then “000110101” (hex 35, ASCII “5”), then the ASCII [CR] again.

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