How to connect to a plotter

We need technical stuff from the digital Middle Ages to connect to a plotter.
Ever heart from a serial port???

We need a USB Serial converter, we can by these at dealextreme.com, but the problem is we want to connect to the plotters using  both MACOS and Windows. These converters need a driver which is usually only for Windoes. SO beware. Eventually I bought USB Serial converter at amazon.com, checking the OS.



Then we need a connection between the serial plug and the serial in of the plotter. This is the 25 pins so called printer plug.



Beware, because I also found some serial printer port connectors which didn't work. Opening these connectors I found out that they had other connections and I used my soldering device to get the wiring right (for our plotters that is.)





The schema for the connections:


driver
for the plotter we need a driver
http://sourceforge.net/projects/osx-pl2303/


dip switch
The setting of the dip switch is critical:
here an image for a HP 7475a:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24428637@N06/2954809025/

from this blog:
http://grandahl.net/feed/?p=19