I'm getting ready to purchase a KR150 robot with KRC1 controls and I'm currently researching ways that I can control the arm without needing to rely on the pendant or internal PC to program it. From what I can tell, the PC included within the control box is very outdated, underpowered and difficult to program. It is necessary for me to be able to connect a more modern PC to it and send it commands remotely, or at the very least be able to easily transfer programs to the controls from a more modern offline programming tool.
From what I have gathered so far from various manuals and forum posts, the standard way to do this on the KRC1 is via the RS232 serial interface. However, I am having trouble finding any information about HOW to do this. To be honest, I haven't owned a PC with a serial port for many years, so my knowledge of using it is zero!
Can anyone point me to some good resources about how to connect to my KRC1 via RS232 (or any other real-time-ish interface) so that I can control my robot?