Serial Port: Unable to Send/Receive Data

Question

I have been working on a program in Visual C# that will eventually be fed a stream of data to populate a database via serial port.

I have been having problems sending and receiving data via serial port. To eliminate my possible faulty coding, I am using HyperTerminal by Hilgraeve. I am not actually using a serial port at the moment, for testing purposes, this is my setup:

PC1 - USB-to-RS232 Converter - Female-to-Female RS232 Coupling - RS232-to-USB Converter - PC2

(Both converters have male RS232 ends so I had to use the coupling in the middle).

I am using this set up just to make sure I am sending and receiving data correctly before I begin testing serial port communication with my C# application (and I do not have a COM port on any computer I own). Both computers have the driver associated with the USB-to-RS232 converter; the converter shows up in the device manager as a COM port on both PCs. The device manager says they are both working correctly (if that means anything).

As I open HyperTerminal, I connect using COMx (where x is the number of the COM port associated with the converter). For the port settings, I use 9600 Bits per second, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit, and no flow control. I then connect to the ports by clicking "Call" on the toolbar. I do all this for both PCs. As I type keys on one PC, nothing shows up on the other PC.

Does anyone have a clue as to what could be going on?

Answer 1

Wrong connector, you need a null modem.

(Copied from Hans Passant's comment to allow question to show as answered as per protocol.)