In the past I had no problems buying motherboards with two or more
serial ports, however with the growth of USB and USB/Serial conversion
it is becoming more difficult to find motherboards with 2 ports or
more. I have just spent a long time looking at Tigerdirect and a few
other vendors and find few models.
Can anyone point me to some models/makes that sell for under $100
and have two serial ports?
On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:53:55 -0700 (PDT), FS
<sonnichs@berkshire.net> wrote:
>In the past I had no problems buying motherboards with two or more
>serial ports, however with the growth of USB and USB/Serial conversion
>it is becoming more difficult to find motherboards with 2 ports or
>more. I have just spent a long time looking at Tigerdirect and a few
>other vendors and find few models.
> Can anyone point me to some models/makes that sell for under $100
>and have two serial ports?
>
>Thanks,
>FS
Browse through Newegg's motherboard offerings, looking at
the pictures of the rear ports. You didn't mention the
other important features you need but here's one, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186015
On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:53:55 -0700 (PDT), FS
<sonnichs@berkshire.net> wrote:
>In the past I had no problems buying motherboards with two or more
>serial ports, however with the growth of USB and USB/Serial conversion
>it is becoming more difficult to find motherboards with 2 ports or
>more. I have just spent a long time looking at Tigerdirect and a few
>other vendors and find few models.
> Can anyone point me to some models/makes that sell for under $100
>and have two serial ports?
>
>Thanks,
>FS
I failed to mention the other obvious option, just getting a
PCI (or PCI Express, I assume such a beast exists) Serial
Port card. Might be the best option in the long run if you
anticipate needing to use two serial devices beyond the next
system built since it's likely to be harder and harder to
find dual ported boards. Even the one I linked previously
was pretty outdated.
Thanks Kony.
I have ordered a few PCI cards to try out. I use Linux and in the
past installing drivers has sometimes been a battle. Perhaps I will
stock pile a few of the motherboards that you listed as well. Serial
is still a very viable technology for low speed (>1M) communications
over air/optical transmitters, inductive links, and other methods that
we use here in oceanography. We can also tweak serial links down below
as 50mW operation-something that is difficult to do with ethernet and
USB
> Thanks Kony.
> I have ordered a few PCI cards to try out. I use Linux and in the
> past installing drivers has sometimes been a battle. Perhaps I will
> stock pile a few of the motherboards that you listed as well. Serial
> is still a very viable technology for low speed (>1M) communications
> over air/optical transmitters, inductive links, and other methods that
> we use here in oceanography. We can also tweak serial links down below
> as 50mW operation-something that is difficult to do with ethernet and
> USB
>
> Cheers
> Fritz
I haven't used any serial for age, but if the current is still same with
the old days then I believe the momboard should have 2 Serial Slots. *BUT*
they may have only 1 serial chip installed, so you may need to drag yourself
to a local computer store to buy a Serial Chip to install it yourself (that
was what I did in the DIAL-UP days).
FS wrote:
> In the past I had no problems buying motherboards with two or more
> serial ports, however with the growth of USB and USB/Serial conversion
> it is becoming more difficult to find motherboards with 2 ports or
> more. I have just spent a long time looking at Tigerdirect and a few
> other vendors and find few models.
> Can anyone point me to some models/makes that sell for under $100
> and have two serial ports?
>
> Thanks,
> FS
They claim this supports Linux without kernel rebuild:
Joel wrote:
> FS <sonnichs@berkshire.net> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Kony.
>> I have ordered a few PCI cards to try out. I use Linux and in the
>> past installing drivers has sometimes been a battle. Perhaps I will
>> stock pile a few of the motherboards that you listed as well. Serial
>> is still a very viable technology for low speed (>1M) communications
>> over air/optical transmitters, inductive links, and other methods that
>> we use here in oceanography. We can also tweak serial links down below
>> as 50mW operation-something that is difficult to do with ethernet and
>> USB
>>
>> Cheers
>> Fritz
>
> I haven't used any serial for age, but if the current is still same with
> the old days then I believe the momboard should have 2 Serial Slots. *BUT*
> they may have only 1 serial chip installed, so you may need to drag yourself
> to a local computer store to buy a Serial Chip to install it yourself (that
> was what I did in the DIAL-UP days).
Motherboards have a Super I/O chip on them, which handles the lower speed
I/O requirements of a motherboard. In this example, the company name used
to be Winbond, but Winbond has spun off its logic IC business to a separate
unit. In the table here, you can see the Super I/O chips have at least
two UART interfaces.
For the time being at least, motherboards will have Super I/O chips. So that
part is a given. Looking in Device Manager, you might see two serial ports
available. But the motherboard maker may choose to remove the output
connector, forcing the customer to buy an adapter assembly to
gain access. Or the level shifting chip (which converts TTL to RS232)
may not be installed, and that is a more serious issue, as
they don't leave sockets for them.
(Example of an optional DB9 connector and ribbon cable assembly.)
Depending on the price target for the motherboard, they could remove
both the level shift chips and DB9 connectors, and have no serial ports.
And then design the BIOS, so that the BIOS disables the appearance of
the ports, on the Super I/O chip.
So in this case, the best motherboard would be one which has two DB9
connectors visibly present in the I/O connector area of the motherboard.
That would be proof that all the infrastructure is present and available.
Seeking motherboards with 2 serial ports 
Linear Mode
