I've got my sim900 module working with arduino by using their software serial library, however, I want to eliminate arduino from the equation and have serial communication directly to sim900 module.
I'm using putty as my terminal emulator. It's serial is configured to COM1 19200 8 N 1 the same as device manager configuration for this port.
I connect straight from hardware serial on my PCs motherboard into serial-to-ttl interface board which connects to sim900 module. The board has 4 pins - VCC GND TX RX. They're all connected to my sim900 hardware serial as follows: VCC=5V GND=GND TX=TX RX=RX (Yes I know that it's always actually TX=RX and RX=TX, but when I connect it that way my interface board doesn't blink any led to indicate a transfer whereas it does when I connect TX=TX and RX=RX). The switch on the module is set to hardware serial pins as well.
So the only thing that happens when I send AT commands such as AT or ATI and press enter is that puttys cursor comes back to the beginning of command that I typed. No response.
I'm thinking that I'm not doing something that the arduinos software serial port is doing when it sends commands to sim900.
Can anyone help please ? It's literally been days of trying different configurations with no results.
In that time besides getting sim900 working with arduino software serial I verified that the hardware serial port on my motherboard is working correctly and the interface board is working correctly as well.