Sorting out communications

The glue did NOT work - "Epoxy rulz".

After lots of testing with the BS editor debug window and the Windows standard terminal program I realized this problem with the BS not seeing data being sent by the Java program had to do with the Java program, unfortunately. Didn't I read somewhere about one stop bit not being enough? In a final desparate attempt I set the number of stop bits to two, though the port was set to one, and - it worked.

Some Googleling brought me to BASIC Stamp RS232 serial notes. It seems that between reading the three vars (or the individual chars? - DEC foo requires some medium intelligent parsing) the stamp needs to do some thinking, and that takes longer than the one stop bit takes to be sent.

Now I was able to successfully send commands to the BS, switching the mast LED groups on and off.

Power controller board. In my treasure chest I found some screws long and slender enough to fix the luster terminals to the board, and after drilling 9 holes by hand everything was neatly in place. Much better!