Serial communication over RS232

Hey Friends,

I have a good one for you today. For starters, I have an MDC2230 and Windows 7 on my computer.

When I try to use USB for serial communication, the controller is lost once I start running my program, so I want to switch to RS232. When using a female db9 (computer side) to male db15 (controller side), communication works fine. The issue with this is that I do not yet have a breakout board that allows me to plug the rs232 in and still use the other pins on the controller, so I am trying to use a female to female db9 rs232 cable and use jumpers to go from the controller side female db9 into the controller, so now the other pins are open that I need for my sensors. For some reason, this is not working. Another guy in my lab used this same cable-jumper setup on his motor controller (FBL2360), and it worked fine. I tested the cable from the computer side to the controller side of the jumper I'm using for the rx and tx pins, and they have a connection like they're supposed to.

So from this I know that the cable is fine, the jumpers are fine, and serial communication over rs232 is possible on this particular controller (i.e. the controller isn't having any issues with it).

Does anyone have any ideas for me? I'm pretty clueless at this point.

Thanks