Need MAX232 Fast!

[philba]

My apologies Philba. However as i pointed out in my opening sentence I'm a newbie! so here's what i can only hope is a detailed description of
...

we've all been new and that just may not be a crime...

I was referring more to the first response you got that said, in essence, it's ok. Then a long thread entailed after you got exactly the answer you wanted. In general, when you have a question, you will get a lot more on-topic response if you demonstrate that you've done a little research. The first thing I do is fire up google if I'm clueless about something.

In the case of a chip, I look for the datasheet. it may be greek to you but you will be much better off having actually looked at it. there are things that even a naked wet noobie can ferret out of it.

 

[theyikes]

Thanks All

Thanks for the advice Philba i'll take it on board. just looking at the data sheets now, holy cow there's tonnes!

Thanks

The Yikes

 

[justDIY]

Is that supposed to translate into ascii? It's not working for me.

no, it's just a grouping of pseudo random numbers. it also happens to be some sort of master key for one of the new fangled dvd encryption schemes. Hollywood would like us to believe they "own" this random grouping of numbers and made quite a fuss a few months ago when a security researcher posted those same numbers on his blog. the numbers are now spread far and wide, leaving Hollywood little recourse to suppress it, however they're still trying.

 

[Torben]

in the components list he refers to the MAX232 chip, which i am not in possession of. I am however in possession of a MAX232CPE chip and i was wondering if i could use this particular chip instead of the one on the component list.

Hi there,

As has already been noted, you are indeed in possession of a MAX232 chip--just one with the additional designation 'CPE' which tells you more about that particular model's characteristics. My Nissan XE truck is still a Nissan XE even though its full name is 'XEV6'.

So yeah--all you have to do is find the specs for the CPE in the data sheet and see what capacitors you need for it, then just copy the diagram out of the data sheet, as most of the data sheets I've seen for this chip have a full example schematic.

Does that help? You said you're reading the data sheets now so you probably just figured all that out anyway, but hey.


Good luck!

Torben

 

[Tomble]

FWIW, if you wind up needing *another* MAX232 for whatever reason, note that there are *clones* of the chip, which *AFAIK* are compatible, are often cheaper, and may be more readily available (eg from mail-order places).

For instance, I got myself some SP232-something chips, but this was for a project of my own design so I couldn't *swear* that the chips were perfectly compatible with the original versions (because it didn't matter to me), but that was definitely the impression I got, and you could check for yourself if it came to it.