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| Thread ID: 79349 | 2007-05-17 02:15:00 | Motherboards Don't have serial ports now! | muzza (7316) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 550491 | 2007-05-17 02:15:00 | I am in the process of looking for a new motherboard as part of a rebuild project (any good suggestions appreciated - Intel 945P 2 core 775 socket, and I notice not many now have a rear com I/O port. As I still use this for connected variious gear is there a way around this? |
muzza (7316) | ||
| 550492 | 2007-05-17 02:24:00 | Cant do much about it, besides buy a PCI serial card, if it supports PCI. | Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 550493 | 2007-05-17 02:58:00 | you can also get USB - serial adaptors which work ok for most things. Our work laptops need to run a lot of terminal software for various equipment and we use these adaptors for software / hardware that requires a com port and there doesn't seem to be much problem with it | dugimodo (138) | ||
| 550494 | 2007-05-17 02:59:00 | USB -> Serial dongles are also available. [edit: snap!] |
Erayd (23) | ||
| 550495 | 2007-05-17 07:34:00 | But of course, most of the USB to serial adaptors are designed to drive serial interface equipment, which can be a problem. :( Many pieces of equipment (muzza's "various gear"?) aren't true serial devices: they just use the status lines of the serial port, and not all adaptors provide a full emulation of the serial port. My approach is to keep old computers. Many of the PC programmes which drive my gear run under DOS, anyway, so they don't need Windows of any flavour. ;) |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 550496 | 2007-05-17 07:41:00 | Well the one I bought recently did. Perhaps you're just looking at the wrong ones. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 550497 | 2007-05-17 07:56:00 | Well the one I bought recently did.Perhaps you were lucky with that one. Or perhaps your device doesn't need any status or control lines which aren't provided by your adapter. My devices in general don't use the serial data lines, and the timings can be critical. Real serial ports work. USB serial adapters don't always work, even without considering the timing involved in protocol translation, and the lags and jitter from Windows. I find it's easiest to use a computer with a proper serial port. I haven't tried the USB ones very intensively, but I have an idea they usually want programmes which go through standard BIOS or Windows I/O functions, so the calls can be intercepted and diverted to the USB driver. My software usually drives the registers directly. muzza might have the same problem. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 550498 | 2007-05-17 07:58:00 | you can also get USB - serial adaptors which work ok for most things. Our work laptops need to run a lot of terminal software for various equipment and we use these adaptors for software / hardware that requires a com port and there doesn't seem to be much problem with it The only ones of these that I have seen that work on all the serial apps that we have at work are the Bafo 810 model.. Forget the DSE ones.. |
paulw (1826) | ||
| 550499 | 2007-05-17 08:47:00 | I brought a 965 Gigabyte a few months back. That certainly has one com port out the back. | Big John (551) | ||
| 550500 | 2007-05-17 10:08:00 | Do you do your own electronics stuff? Have you considered using microcontrollers instead of direct computer control? I've just started doing some simple stuff with AVRs and have found them really neat (not that I have anything to compare them with). They're hard to get here and I had to order them from overseas but being able to have a 16MHz 8 bit programmable controller (costing a few dollars each) in a circuit opens up a lot of options. | TGoddard (7263) | ||
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