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serial ports...are they disapearing? — Parallax Forums

serial ports...are they disapearing?

jakjrjakjr Posts: 88
edited 2004-09-02 14:35 in General Discussion
Herelately I've noticed I am seeing less and less of serial ports·or even·anything to do with them for that matter.

I recently completely rebuilt my PC (new board, processor, HD, etc. etc.) and·even though I got the·absolute best motherboard frys sold it doesn't·even have a serial port, nor a printer port, and I believe it doenst even have a monitor port. Luckily my printer is USB and my graphics card has a monitor port.

However,·it has 6·USB ports, a few Firewire ports, fiber optics port, and a few others that I dont remember.

A couple years ago I got a new laptop, it doesnt have a serial port either. However it has firewire, usb IR, etc.

I have also looked at a few new (prebuilt retail) pc's and some of them don't have serial ports either.

So... are serial ports becoming a thing of the past or what?

I might add a while back I needed about a 10-15 foot (or longer) serial cable. Looked at a number of office stores, electronics stores, etc. and the best I could come up with was a 6 footer. A few years ago if I went into an office store looking for the same cable I could have easily picked up a whole case.

·

Comments

  • GadgetmanGadgetman Posts: 2,436
    edited 2004-09-01 06:56
    No, serial ports aren't disappearing....

    It's just that the hardware producers doesn't like them.
    A 9pin Serial port takes the same space as 2 USB ports.
    It's the same reason why they often don't put printer ports on laptops.

    The first thing I bought after buying a new laptop this year was a USB to serial converter...
    (Luckily, the accessories manufacturers like them )
  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2004-09-01 11:12
    Yeah, I got a top-of-the-line toshiba notebook it has everything, including a paralle port, but no serial port. Go figure.

    Bean
  • Chris SavageChris Savage Parallax Engineering Posts: 14,406
    edited 2004-09-01 15:03
    Since my primary business is in computers, I would have to say that many manufacterers are doing away with Serial Ports for cost, but not necessarily to replace them with USB ports, since many of the motherboards we sell have only one Serial Port, but there is nothing where the other one would be.· Some boards have on-board video, and they will often replace the 9-pin Serial Port with a VGA connector there, so that makes sense.· Higher end boards will still make the serial port available on the motherboard through a standard connector.· I've had people come in for computers that have at least 2 Serial Ports, sicne they use the computer in machine shops, or for Vinyl machines.


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    Chris Savage

    Knight Designs
    324 West Main Street
    P.O. Box 97
    Montour Falls, NY 14865
    (607) 535-6777

    Business Page:·· http://www.knightdesigns.com
    Personal Page:··· http://www.lightlink.com/dream/chris
    ·
  • steve_bsteve_b Posts: 1,563
    edited 2004-09-01 15:20
    My work requires me to interface to different systems.· So work bought me a laptop (what a shame eh!)

    Anyhow, we had to send it back because the IT guy (not the one on this board! tongue.gif ) neglected to see if it had one (what would he need one for right?!).

    So, I had to reorder my laptop and couldn't get a new model.· I had to get an older model (well, just not the current model).

    But it doesn't have a floppy drive!!· Ok, I've got a CDRW/DVD combo drive...but, surprisingly, I have more need (day to day) of a floppy disk than a CD drive.



    Ppl on this board will no doubt require access to serial ports....but I think the common consumer doesn't.· Go buy a new system....what would he need a serial port for?!· If the keyboard and the mouse don't have their own ports...odds are they're USB....speakers have their own port...else they're USB.· Printers...USB.· It's what's becoming "LEGACY" equipment that requires these aging ports.·

    I lucked out with this new laptop in that it has a parallel port/ serial port...and bluetooth...and firewire....and plenty of USBs....

    I'll keep my parallel/serial port and trade the rest for my darn floppy though!! haha

    Eventually I'll have to purchase one of those clunky USB/serial adaptors....glue it to the side of the laptop or something...such a pain!





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    ·

    Steve
    http://members.rogers.com/steve.brady
    http://www.geocities.com/paulsopenstage

    "Inside each and every one of us is our one, true authentic swing. Something we was born with. Something that's ours and ours alone. Something that can't be learned... something that's got to be remembered."
  • Chris SavageChris Savage Parallax Engineering Posts: 14,406
    edited 2004-09-01 16:24
    Many legacy devices are being phased out...My business laptop (The one I use for the stamps too) doesn't have a Serial Port, Parallel Port, or Floppy Drive.· Many new computers (Not just laptops) are lacking floppy drives, especially since Windows XP boots from a CD (Previous versions of Windows required boot floppies).

    Anyone who's been inside of a computer is probably familiar with the 40 & 80 wire ribbon cables used in IDE Hard Drives.· During this year, we've built 50 computer which DO NOT have IDE Hard Drives in them.· Instead they are using a new standard called Serial-ATA (SATA), which uses a cable that more closely resembles a USB cable.· It's very small, and for being serial, still has a higher data transfer rate than an ATA133 IDE Cable!

    Many things are changing...My first ZIP Drive was 100MB...At the time it was unheard of, getting 100MB (Well, 95.5MB) on a floppy disk...Several companies made Floptical Drives capable of 120MB, but none had the data integrity and reliability of IOMEGA's ZIP format...In the last 3 years we have gone from ZIP100, to ZIP250 to ZIP750, the latter 2 being USB 2.0 (480 Mbps).

    But the thing that really gets me, is our CPU technology is still based on that of the 8086!· Segment/Offset addressing should've been banished years ago!
    eyes.gif

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    Chris Savage

    Knight Designs
    324 West Main Street
    P.O. Box 97
    Montour Falls, NY 14865
    (607) 535-6777

    Business Page:·· http://www.knightdesigns.com
    Personal Page:··· http://www.lightlink.com/dream/chris
    ·
  • jakjrjakjr Posts: 88
    edited 2004-09-01 17:18
    Yeah I've also noticed floppy drives are becoming more of an odity on laptops. Used to you were lucky if the laptop had USB, now I guess youre lucky if it has a floppy drive. In fact currently Ive noticed a bunch of USB floppy drives popping up, used to if you seen one you would think "what would I need another floppy drive for?"

    I remember the 100 meg zips as well, I think they used a serial conection. I almost got one but shortly after I decided on getting one they came out with the 250 meg USB zip's so I ended up with one of them.

    Before I got my zip drive I was looking at things called jazz drives and orb drives (I think that was their names) I believe they were supposed to store up to 1 gig on a disk. Didnt get one though I think just the disk were like ~50 bucks a peice wheres as zips were 5-10 bucks a peice.
  • BeanBean Posts: 8,129
    edited 2004-09-01 17:32
    Chris,
    I agree about that Sement/Offset stuff, what a pain in the butt. Here is where the mac had the upperhand with the 68000 linear memory model.

    Terry
  • J. A. StreichJ. A. Streich Posts: 158
    edited 2004-09-01 19:20
    Heh, I still have a floppy floppy drive laying arround, I should put it in my P4... and turn stuff in on old floppies... tongue.gif

    As far as phasing things out, I think most of the newer mother boards have pins serial connections for them to be added, but not the back-panel retail. I work for the a professor in the Math dept at the uni, sys admining a cluster of Linux boxen, and we've got the latest intel boards that were avalible 3 months ago. Each only has one serial port, and that is REALLY annoying as the main node has to talk to talk the UPS and the two (internal to the cluster) switches... To make life more complicated the UPS company (APC) swapped the pins of their UPSs so you have to have a specail cabel (buy it from APC, or make it), or the hand-shake will tell the UPS to shutdown. We've been trying to use their USB connection and software to talk to it, and it isn't quite compatible with our kernel. It's a pain in the butt.

    Point of the story: they are still in use and not gone yet, but they are no longer as common as they once were. That is why the Serial to USB converters are becomming more and more popular.
  • Chris SavageChris Savage Parallax Engineering Posts: 14,406
    edited 2004-09-01 21:46
    jakjr,

    ·· The first ZIP100 Drives were Parallel port, or SCSI, then they added ATAPI and finally USB.· The Parallel port ones caused a temporary increase of my sales of add-on parallel ports, which is funny, since now they're disappearing.· I had three parallel ports on my first Pentium machine...One for my printer, one for my ZIP Drive and one for my EPROM/Device Programmer (Needham's).

    Terry,

    ·· Not only were the Macs ahead of the game, but the Amiga was using the 680x0 processors and had linear access to the full memory as well...Amigas were definately ahead of their time.· If only Commodore had a real marketing dept. =(

    GameMaster,

    ·· Yes, I have the FTDI USB to Serial Adapter connected to my Laptop.· And mentioning UPS systems, I have 2 energizer systems...The newer software SUCKS, but these are only USB, no serial, so I can't have Windows XP manage them!· =(

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    Chris Savage

    Knight Designs
    324 West Main Street
    P.O. Box 97
    Montour Falls, NY 14865
    (607) 535-6777

    Business Page:·· http://www.knightdesigns.com
    Personal Page:··· http://www.lightlink.com/dream/chris
    ·
  • Harry StonerHarry Stoner Posts: 54
    edited 2004-09-02 14:35
    Hey 100mb ZIP drives were ok but I went with the external SCSI Syquest EZ135 (!35mb drives). From what I saw they were quite a bit superior to the ZIP drives. 9 years later I still have a couple attached to my home and work systems but alas I use USB stick drives for transfers now.

    Despite my support of the EZ135 it kind of became the Betamax of the data storage world (ZIP = VHS). Some of the media I own for it has also started to "decay" in the last couple of years. It seems there is no permanent data storage medium, a fact that causes much concern for archivists!

    Harry
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