can't communicate with AX1500

i have a legacy AX1500 installed on a robot. i recently downloaded roborun+ and have a USB-to-serial converter. windows 7 device manager says USB-to_serial is installed wiht drivers (took a while to find them) and then i selected 9600baud, 7 bit, even parity, 1 stop bit, no flow control. 1 start bit was not an option

i have controllers 15pin connector wired up and the default works to run the robot in RC mode just fine. i also wired to this DB15 a DB9 per manual on pins 2, 3, 5.

i know which com port USB-to-serial is. but when i connect roborun+ software it just cycles through the coms never stops and connects. if i force it to connect on the proper COM the light goes green but never any data flow.

i have tried two different USB-to-serial cables.
i have tried two different lap tops
i have rebooted umpteen times

reading through roboteq forumn i see maybe i need roborun not roborun+? but the links to download site do not show this software anymore.

any help?

some progress

i found roborun software elsewhere on the net. installed it.
downloaded some other software called USBDreview from Cnet to see if i had any conflicts with COM ports since roborun software only allows up to COM8 but my USB2Serial was in COM10.
i disabled or disconnected anything on COM8. then went into device manager and changed USB2Serial from COM10 to COM8

open roborun, select COM 8. on the console now i see a lot of text flooding in so makes me think i'm connected. but am I?

top right controller ID says "communication established" which is good but then "no valid controller info" which is bad.
when i click on load from controller i get runtime error 401 and controller did not respond

then roborun crashes

searching around i found strip.ocx file is supposed to be 'the fix' for windows 7. i didn't see where it said this file nees to go, so i pasted it over top the one in roboteq file and windows system 64wow directory. later i found some more info and i followed it (see below) but it didn't help


The Strip.ocx file may fail to properly register when installing Roborun on a Windows 7 PC, typically on 64-bit versions of the OS.

To correct the problem follow these steps:
•Retrieve the Strip.ocx file from this link . Unzip and save it on C:\ . Alternatively, you may copy the Strip.ocx file, from C:\Program Files\Roboteq and paste it onto C:\
•Right click on the command prompt icon in the start menu and select "Run as Administrator". The command prompt is normally located in All Programs > Accessories. You will be prompted to approve the elevation.
•Once the command prompt open, type the following: %systemroot%\System32\regsvr32.exe Strip.ocx <-- note, instructions don't say this but you need to be in the C: directory first, you may need to type cd.. a couple of times to get to the root.
•Launch Roborun normally.

let's at least prove hyperterminal works.
first off, this is not easy in Win7 because hyperterminal no longer ships with. but all u need are the two hyperterminal files and put them anywnere on your Win7 computer and then poof you have hyperterminal!

i got the files hypertrm.dll and hypertrm.exe from here: digitizor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/hyperterminal1.zip

ahh hyperterminal.. how art thou?

set up COM8 with 7-bit, even parity, no hardware control

connect and BINGO i read data. just a bunch of random stuff which changes all the time. it looks like the same stuff i was seeing on the roborun consol tab. so at least this works.. i'm close, i can feel it. but i don't know why it crashes with 8020 or error 401 when i try to load configuration or do anything really other than read info

still though, same problem with roborun.communication established and console has flood of data rolling in but i get error 401 or 8020 if i try to load configuration from controller. what to do?