XM Radio, part 2

After an initial unsuccessful attempt at getting XM Radio to work I decided to try and get this to work using the serial to usb converter instead of plugging straight onto the motherboard's COM2 port. This worked out of the box but I (of course) had to redo my connections because I'd manually mapped them onto what I thought were the right pins given my cable setup. I didn't have the right cable to hook onto the motherboard and so I decided to try and wire things myself. In the end this turned out to be a wasted effort so now I need to go and find the proper (twisted) serial cable. It's getting there ...

I also had to resend the activation code for my radio and hope to be on-line any moment now ... let's hope it doesn't take an hour as they claim is sometimes the case!