View source for Via Demo Board Serial Lashup

The Via VT8562 demo board doesn't have a serial connector.  Via has some cards that will provide a couple of serial ports - they plug into the Video Capture Port slot - but they are hard to get.

It's easy to get a serial port with a soldering iron, 3 wires, and an OLPC Multipurpose serial adapter http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Serial_adapters .

J20 pin B25 goes to the GND pin on the serial adapter header.

J20 pin B24 goes to the next pin over on the serial header.  This is the data from the Via board to the adapter.

J20 pin B23 goes to the third pin - the one adjacent to the pin marked 3.3V.  This is the data from the adapter to the Via board.

J20 is the black fine-pitch connector nearest the center of the board.  The B row is the row closest to the center of the board.

Pin B32 is at the end of the connector nearest the center of the board.  The pin numbers descend sequentially from there, even numbers farthest from the middle line of the connector, odd numbers staggered in a bit.

You have to solder onto the back of the board; you can't get to odd numbered pins from the top because the plastic housing covers them.

Instead of pin B25, you could connect to any of several nearby grounds on that connector.  Consult the schematic.

If you use a OLPC serial cable with the small end cut off (As shown in picture) the the wiring color code is:
<pre>
B25 Light Brown
B24 Dark Brown
B23 Red
</pre>

If you have a cable from the most resent batch of cables then its:

<pre>
B25 Light Brown
B24 Green
B23 Red
</pre>

You have to configure the chipset to put the serial data on the VCP pins, not the DVP pins.

[[Image:via_serial.jpg]]