On 2016-03-15 18:30, James Knott wrote:
Many mom boards still have a serial port and header connector, but it's not brought out to a rear panel connector.
My case exactly. I cheated: I looked for a board with that connection. At the time I was still sending faxes.
For those, it's possible to add the connector to have a standard serial port.
I did so. I had to find an old connector, then solder some wires to make it longer and reach the back of the box.
Also, I believe serial port cards are still available for those systems that don't have a built in serial port.
The problem are laptops. Many technicians on, er, hardware rooms, need to services things there that have a serial port for accessing. And, hey, their laptops don't have it now. Of course, the solution is to use an USB-rs232 adapter, but these things do not handle all the cables. Another problem are GPS receivers on serial ports. If you are interested in the time, with millisecond precision, you need a real serial port. The time on USB is not predictable. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)