Serial Ports

TE1A_man · Serial Ports

I know some members have been complaining that their new computers don't have serial ports for lathes and etc..., and that the usb to serial connectors don't work. Well, if you live in america, (or can pay a pretty penny for shipping,) here ya go.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158046

Cheapest one i could find, also seems to be the best, despite what it says for compatability, it works on Vista.

two 920Kb/s serial ports, one 1.5Mb/s parallel port, PCI interface.

johnreid

THe things I use one for only work in a DOS environment, wish tey would work in Windows, in fact I love USB devices.

mc_mc

Have you tried DOS box? it genuinely emulates a DOS operating system on Windows hosts including the hardware. It was written to allow people to run old games, but it does mention serial ports too. It's free anyway so perhaps worth a try.

http://www.dosbox.com/information.php?page=0

Steve_S

The problem isn't with software... there are ways around that. The fact is that new PC's just don't have the serial port connector any more. It's becoming a problem in industry where there are lots of pieces of equipment that have plenty of life left in them but they need to be controlled via RS232 protocol from a serial port. The USB/Serial convertors from the likes of Belkin are useful, but they just don't work in some situations. At least, that's my experience.

tmuir

mc_mc

You can still get a PCI card that gives you the old serial and parallel ports (and will give you a genuine COM2 port). TE1A_man posted one in his link above.

I thought the problem was the software required DOS and didn't run in 'Windows' DOS emulation'.

At work we have an old OMR reader that's serial but still runs on a modern Windows XP machine with one of those boards. We did manage to get the old DOS software to work and even got it printing to a modern windows network printer (redirected the LPT1 port to the network printer).

johnreid

I know someone who bought several Anritsu Sitemasters that seem to only work with a real Serial Port. HE bought all of his people new Laptops, only to find out that they were useless.
No small investment, glad I am no longer in that field of work.

tmuir

Yes you can get cards for desktops but a lot of companies IT departments now only want to issue laptops and thats where the real problem is.
When I worked at the railways all the radios in the trains were programmed by a serial connection but worse still the software would only run on 286s.

We asked for $150 000 to upgrade the radio network and got told no, then we showed them the 286 laptop we had with the screen removed as it had 'let out it's moke' connected to a CRT monitor and told the managers 'When this PC stops working, we can no longer maintain the radio network for the trains'

The next day we got our money.

johnreid

Arent Motorolas wonderful though

tmuir

Mister Occlusion

ebay is probably a source for cheap com port cards too. I buy stuff direct from HK and it still costs a fraction of what the exact same, or rebranded part sells for locally (if you can find it).

I use the USB to serial for programming switches from the laptop. I tried one on a custodian's PC once, since we've been switching them over from dumb terminals to hyperterminal in windows for running the HVAC controls, but it was glitchy. Had to get a cheap com port card for that. And being that it was a cheap com port card it was also a royal bastard to install, even AFTER I sourced the proper drivers.

Getting hard to find decent interface cards these days. Many seem to be made in fabs with so-so quality control using the cheapest no-name chips in the business, or rubbish that comes out of the likes of Via and Realtek