A follow up to the Pantel Dilemma.

After being assured and reassured (even by the CEO in the above post) that the RS232 documentation on the Pantel site was in fact correct, I received an e-mail last week with new Pantel RS232 documentation. The command strings are completely different than the document still currently available on the website, and the new pinouts are a standard 2/3/5. New commands in a new library file, a straight through wiring configuration, and presto, it works. The downside is that we have had a customer with a $5,000 TV that has been basically useless for the past month.

The existing (and still "current") documentation shows the TV having a male 9 pin connector, using pins 1,3,4, and I was told that the female connector on our new TV would wire the same way. The new documentation shows the TV having a female connector, which it in fact does.

I have about eight or more hours into trying to troubleshoot the RS232 issues with this TV, with no resolution until the e-mail arrived. My question would be, if you are changing a product, and ship the product, should somebody not know that the changes have a possible impact on the usefulness of the product? Given the current economic climate, and the general competitive environment of the CE world (yes, I realize this is a niche product), I view this as a pretty sizeable risk to assume.

Anyway, for those interested, here are a couple of the working strings (entered into the library manager with the hex button checked):

38,400; 8, N, 1

Power Off
69 D0 00 00

Power On
69 D1 00 00

Again, thanks to those who tried to help.