Help me get this Wacom tablet to work

December 20, 2004 4:04 AM

My mother-in-law has lent me a big Wacom tablet (UD-1212). Unfortunately, it's a little old, and I may not be able to get it to work without some AskMe help. [MI]

The tablet itself has a male DB9 interface on it. With the tablet came a cable that plugs into the tablet and has a male DIN-8 on the other side. Yeah, you heard me, old-style Apple Serial. There's also an AC/DC power adaptor that plugs into the cable in a weird way, which leads me to believe that the plug on the tablet isn't plain-old DB9.

Ideally, I'd like to get this tablet working with my PC, but I'd also be satisfied if I could get it working on a friend's G4 Powerbook. OSX doesn't natively support serial tablets (although there is TabletMagic), but there aren't any DIN-8 connectors on the G4 Powerbook anyhow. DIN-8 to USB converters cost upwards of $100, and even then, can I be sure TabletMagic will work with it?

According to the box, this cable set is the "Apple Interface Kit", and there apparently was a "PC Interface Kit" at some point. But I haven't been able to find it anywhere. If anyone can find me any information, like a pinout diagram for the Wacom UD-1212 tablet (my brother's a pretty good EE), or somewhere I could buy a PC Interface Kit or something like that, I would be grateful.

posted by Plutor to technology (3 comments total)

Well, since TabletMagic appears to be a pretty new OSX app, I can only assume one would use it with a serial to USB adapter. For Windows, This link seems to have the pinout you are seeking. Or you can convert from the Apple serial to a DB9 RS232 for your PC. Some pinouts here. Here are Froogle results for the official PC cable. Wacom also seems to have up-to-date drivers even for these old pads.
posted by zsazsa at 9:25 AM on December 20, 2004

Here's my attempt at fixing up the pinout in that forum.
posted by zsazsa at 9:31 AM on December 20, 2004

Zsazsa, thank you very much. I'll pass this along to my brother, and he should be able to whip it up. Let's just hope it doesn't fry my motherboard. (I guess I just need a little stronger Google fu.)
posted by Plutor at 10:15 AM on December 20, 2004