NOVAG STAR DIAMOND SERIAL PORT
(Posted 2012-01-16 19:16:42 by Ray Lopez)

I've spent some time off and on during the last few weeks trying to get my
Novag Star Diamond chess computer to communicate with my laptop.

The Star Diamond is an older model from Novag's table-top chess computer
line.  It is a very nice chess computer, allowing you to play a game of
chess against a fairly strong chess program, all the while moving small
plastic pieces so that it is similar to playing a human opponent
over-the-board.  I really like the Star Diamond, mainly because it has a
lot of features to help train weaker chess players, such as myself.

Some of the nice features are based on the fact that the Star Diamond has a
built in serial port.  This means that it can be connected to a regular
computer, and you can then use a terminal program to send and receive text
information to the Star Diamond.  This is cool, because you can play games
on the Star Diamond then save those games to text files on your computer
for future analysis, which helps me immensely in learning to become better
at chess.

I could not find an online source for the serial cable to connect the Star
Diamond to a serial port on a computer.  But since it was just a simple
serial port, I figured I could build my own cable.  I did so, and wanted to
post this information online in case anyone else was interested.

The Star Diamond serial port comes in the form of an RJ-11 connector on the
back of the device.  The RJ-11 connector is wired up to be used with a
six-conductor telephone wire.  Since most phone wires you have at home or
can get at a store are either 2 conductor or 4 conductor, this means
you''ll need to go to an electronics supply store and get a suitable 6
conductor telephone wire with an RJ-11 plug on both ends.

Looking at the serial port on the Star Diamond, you can see that it only
uses three of the six conductors in the wire, the first, third, and fifth
wires.  In a standard six-conductor phone wire, these correspond to the
wire colors blue, green, and black (respectively).  

These three wires make up the serial connection to any computer with a
standard RS-232 port.  Nowadays, it is difficult to find a new computer
with such a port, so you'll probably need to buy a serial-to-USB adapter,
which can be had online quite cheaply.  

Any serial-to-USB adapter you purchase will likely have a DB-9 male
connector on one end, and the USB connector on the other.  All you have to
do is to correctly wire the phone cable to the DB-9 connector.

The easiest way to do this is to purchase a female RJ-11 to female DB-9
adapter.  Believe it or not, they sell these things.  I found mine at
Altex, a local electonics shop in San Antonio.  When you buy it, the six
colored wires in the adapter are NOT connected to any of the female pins,
you have to do that yourself.  The wiring of the pins is:

	* 
Signal Ground: Blue phone wire -> DB-9 pin 7

	* 
Transmitted Data (from PC to Star Diamond): Black phone wire -> DB-9 pin 2


	* Received Data (from Star Diamond to PC): Green phone wire -> DB-9 pin 3





Once you plug the correct pins into the correct holes on the back of the
DB-9 female connector, stuff it all into its little plastic housing, plug
in the cable into the back of the little plastic housing, and you have
completed the construction of your wire.

To use it, plug the DB-9 connector into a serial port or serial port
adapter on your computer, then plug the RJ-11 connector into the back of
the Star Diamond.  Fire up a terminal program on your computer, and set the
comm parameters for 57600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bits, no parity, and no
flow control.  Open a terminal screen, turn on your Star Diamond, and then
type "n" then press Enter.  This is the command to tell the Star Diamond to
start a new game.  When you enter this command, the Star Diamond should
beep, indicating the start of a new game.

All of the commands for interfacing with the Star Diamond are available in
the following PDF document:

www.novag.com/Web%202006/Manual%20download/Star%20Diamond%20Protocol%20ENGLISH.pdf
[
http://www.novag.com/Web%202006/Manual%20download/Star%20Diamond%20Protocol%20ENGLISH.pdf
]

Good luck!

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