Long story short, I'm replacing the stereo jack connector on the Picaxe Usb Programming Cable with Female Headers. Which wires inside the cord are serial in, serial out, and ground?
I saw nothing in the manual
I saw nothing in the manual about my question, but thanks for trying. What I mean is that when I cut off the stereo connector on the usb programming cable, there are six wires inside it. I would asume that two are serial in, two are serial out, and two ground. However, I do not know which ones are which.
I just relized how I can
I just relized how I can figure this out. If someone has a spare picaxe usb programming cable, can you cut off the stereo connecter and see which wires connect to which sections of the stereo connecter.
You can do this.
Take the stereo connector you cut off. Grab your continuity tester and simply see what section of the stereo conector is connected to which wire. That’s it.
Have you thought of making an adapter?
Have you thought of making an adapter? That way you can have both 3,5mm stereo plug and pin headers. I made one for myself. Only difference is that I used male headers so I can use it on breadboard. Here’s a picture of my creation:
I have tried this with ATMega8 USART and it works just fine even though baud rate topped at 78.6k (maybe because of breadboard and/or my wiring). Manual 1 page 7 will help you if you end up making an adapter.
Edit: Note that Picaxe programming cable uses inverted RX and TX signals. So if you use it with other chips you must invert signals. You can do it with hardware or you can try FT_PROG from FTDI to configure the chip inside the Picaxe cable. I used HW approach just because I didn’t have guts to mess with my only Picaxe programming cable 
The only problem is that the
The only problem is that the stereo connecter is completely broken. That’s why I’m replacing it.
If someone doesn’t mind
If someone doesn’t mind temporarily taking off the stereo connecter on their usb programming cable, can you do what chris said?
Thank you so much. I think
Thank you so much. I think I’m getting closer to figuring this out.
On the AXE027 datasheet, It
On the AXE027 datasheet, It shows that the only connections going out from it are TXD, RXD, and Ground. So there were just extra, unused wires in the cable, or six wires are being used for TXD, RXD, and Ground.
Solved!
Inside the Picaxe Usb Programming Cable, there are six wires. Black, yellow, orange, green, brown, and red. Only three are needed for communication. Black goes to ground. Orange goes to serial in. Yellow goes to serial out. Thank you everyone for your assistance.
I have an seril picaxe
I have an seril picaxe cable, and I want to use it to program an arduino. If i understand it right, I can make an adapter that will connect the 3.5mm plug, to an inverter chip ( http://www.frys.com/product/1003353) and then connect that to the ardruino. And I Should be good right?
Can’t tell for sure
I have never used Arduino so I can’t tell for sure. If Arduino uses serial programming without any hardware flowcontrol (meaning only RX and TX wires are used) then I guess it should work.
Patrick did it the other way around so you’d probably want to check out his “Programming a Picaxe with a Arduino FTDI Cable” post too (https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/node/21245).