Serial ports is perhaps gradual and never a lot use to most laptop customers today, however due to their simplicity and reliability these ports could also be with us for a very long time but.
Whereas the parallel port is now safely buried within the grave of obsolescence, it could appear odd that the standard, gradual serial port continues to be round. However because it seems, bit-by-bit, this humble communications port has turn into important.
What Is a Serial Port?
To not get slowed down in semantics, however the “S” in USB stands for “Serial”, so technically a USB ports is a serial port. Nevertheless, what we’re referring to right here particularly is the 25-pin or 9-pin port which were on PCs for a lot of a long time. Trendy serial ports are typically the 9-pin model, and the port’s form and measurement is similar to that of the (practically out of date) VGA port.
No matter what number of pins a serial port has, it nonetheless transmits knowledge one bit at a time in series. Therefore the identify “serial port.” The varied pins on a serial port could have completely different features, similar to sending management alerts or monitoring knowledge out of your linked system.
Serial ports are gradual with the usual pace on the excessive finish of the vary coming in at a pedestrian 115.2Kbps. At that pace, it might take you virtually a day to switch 1GB of knowledge! That’s beneath excellent circumstances, and issues could be a lot, a lot slower than that.
Why We Nonetheless Use Them
If we now have USB, and serial ports are so gradual and relatively cumbersome, why the heck do some computer systems nonetheless have them? There are a number of causes, however a very powerful ones embody:
- Heaps, and much, of business and scientific gear are nonetheless in service and use serial ports to interface.
- It’s easy, dependable, effectively understood, and less expensive to implement than different extra fashionable port sorts.
- Hobbyists have makes use of, similar to programming microcontrollers.
Serial ports could be simpler to error-correct and most of the functions they’re used for don’t want anyplace close to the utmost normal bit-rate the port affords.
RELATED: Why Do We Still Use Analog Audio Ports?
We’re speaking about easy binary management alerts or plain textual content characters. Because the increased speeds of extra complicated interfaces could be wasted on these use instances, the reliability and ease of the serial ports turn into a way more priceless function.
Motherboards With Serial Ports
Whereas serial ports are nonetheless very a lot in use today, mainstream laptop customers not often, if ever, have a use for them. So chances are you’ll in reality have a tough time discovering any fashionable motherboards in any respect that embody a 9-pin serial port as a part of the I/O (Enter/Output) ports on the again of the motherboard.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t imply the motherboard doesn’t have a serial interface! Similar to you most likely have “headers” on the board to attach your PC case’s USB and audio ports to the motherboard, there’s likelihood there’s a serial port header in your motherboard. You’ll must seek the advice of the motherboard’s handbook to ensure that is the case, but when so you’ll be able to merely purchase a reasonable header plate with a serial port and set up it. It needs to be lower than ten bucks!
USB to Serial Adapters
For those who’re utilizing a laptop, don’t have a motherboard with the suitable headers, or don’t wish to fiddle inside your laptop, one other nice answer is to make use of a USB-to-Serial Adapter. Simply because the identify implies, this converts USB alerts to RS 232C serial port alerts.
It will allow you to hook up with any peripheral that makes use of a serial port, and let you interface with units that settle for serial port alerts, utilizing the suitable software program after all!
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