Help me get this Wacom tablet to work
December 20, 2004 4:04 AM   Subscribe

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 answers 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


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


Response by poster: 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


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