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Need serial ports (RS232) - advice?

post #1 of 5
5/17/07 at 11:37am
Thread Starter 
Hi, I'm new to this forum, but I have a specific question. It seems it is becoming increasingly rare to find notebooks with RS232 ports. I need a laptop for controlling hardware, and I think adapters are not going to cut it, in terms of speed (please correct me if I have the wrong impression here). So, any recommendations for notebooks that still have serial ports (oh, and Windows XP, too ). Thanks!
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post #2 of 5
5/17/07 at 3:50pm
uhm, I would strongly believe that the USB connection is a lot faster than a RS232. There are usb to RS232 adapters out there. I dont know how it will integrate with your applications controlling the hardware.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/USB-RS232-Co.../dp/B00077DJIQ

something like that should do the trick
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post #3 of 5
5/18/07 at 10:18am
The Dell D series 6** and 8** along with M65 and some of HP's business and workstation models are the only I know of but there may be others. You are right that some serial devices will not work with USB adapters, I'm not sure what you mean regarding speed as serial is considerably slower.
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post #4 of 5
5/18/07 at 11:46am
THE Serial to USB dongles come with their own driver set which will emulate serial ports in a USB port. So the virtual apllication of the hardware that is to be controlled can easily detect it through the USB to Serial drivers
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post #5 of 5
5/18/07 at 12:40pm
Some of the older DOS based programs can be a pain to get to see the virtual serial ports of some USB-Serial adapters. Don't ask me why, but some USB-Serial ports are easier than others (usually the more expensive ones are easier to set up). But I've had better luck with a PCMCIA card serial port, it got going right away, but it was much more expensive.

Either way, once you do get them working the speed is the same as it would be through a *real* serial port (very slow in comparison to USB).

For another recomendation, some of the Toshiba Tecra's still have serial ports. I was looking at the newly released Tecra M9 (Santa Rosa based) the other day and was surprised to still see one on there.
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