Navtel 9460 Protocol Analyzer info?

[Scott Stevens]

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:24:40 -0700 (PDT)
Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Apr 2005, Jay West wrote:
> 
> > Joe wrote...
> > >   I found this today. Does anyone have a manual or any information
> > >   on it?
> > > It looks very similar to this 9440 on E-bay
> > > <http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=97190&ite
> > > m=750632019 5&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW>
> >
> > Someday I'll pick up a "datascope" (aka serial protocol analyzer)
> > cheap. I did a lot of serial communications programming in a prior
> > life, and absolutely lived with a datascope. Not sure of the brand,
> > but I remember is was blue. No keyboard in the real sense, but a
> > data entry pad on the front. It was the most incredibly useful
> > thing... you could program it to watch for a particular sequence of
> > ascii characters, then start capturing data. One button would flip
> > the display between ascii/ebcdic, hex, binary.. and it had a dual
> > display mode where it showed transmit on top of the line and receive
> > on the bottom of the line. It was a godsend. It had a breakout box
> > built into it, could buffer to floppy, etc. It could also do sync &
> > async.
> 
> I used a PC-based software scope that worked fairly well.  And yes, it
> was a definite must-have for any serious serial-based development
> work.
> 

It's the perfect use for an older laptop that happens to have two serial
ports.  There is software that then turns both serial RX lines into
inputs so you can monitor both directions of a full duplex connection. 
It gets you a dual-channel 'serial scope.'  Unfortunately, there aren't
that many laptops with two serial ports, certainly none being made
today.