rs232 switch (zaibatsu), 11/08/2019
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Keats reflected that, "a thing of beauty is a joy forever". 
This is of course more fully true for old computer hardware. 
The RS232 port of yester-year is unquestionably retro, even 
if we stubbornly refuse to let it go. It is therefore 
beautiful, as it always has been (technical faults being 
set aside for sentiment's sake).

Recently I've been playing with my ROM BASIC z80 computer, 
adding some mass storage of sorts. It had a working cassette 
setup, but the reliability was only so-so, and the 
flexibility was no-no, so I came up with something else. The 
something else was a serial-port SD reader/writer type of 
device, built around an Arduino mega (cheating, I guess, 
compared to the cassette device).

This highlighted the need to more easily swap serial cables. 
I ordered, therefore, an rs232 switch box on ebay. It 
arrived this morning.

The box is new, very small, and quite simple. It's marked 
"MT-ViKi  4 PORT RS-232 SWITCH" on the front, plus some 
bonus characters in Chinese. There are four blue 
push-buttons on the front, one female DB9 and four male DB9 
ports on the back.

I just tested it, switching the z80's port between the 
pocketerm terminal and a usb-to-serial cable connected to my 
laptop. Not a hitch at all, everything worked as expected, 
no stray characters or anything odd so far.

A thing of beauty. It's the little things in life... someone 
else said that, or perhaps Keat said that as well. In any 
case, it's true.