How many serial ports on a motherboard?

[DuckTape]

Hello folks.

Do motherboards, or at least today's motherboards, typically only have one serial port?

If not, how many do they usually have?

Thanks much!
DuckTape

 

[LumberJack]

Typically most full sized ATX mobos have 2 serial ports, which is usually more than enough for the average user. there are some legacy solution boards... epsecially from ABIT that don't have any... but you shouldn't be hard pressed to find one on a new mobo... but really... other than a mouse, the average user has no use for a standard serial connection.




To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[elzt]

Yeah, serial connections are slow and consume system resources. I don't use them at all. Just wondering when serial or paraller interfaces will become extinct.

 

[LumberJack]

Not for a while... standard serial ports are much cheaper to build stuff for than USB... especially when you don't need the raw speed USB provides... a lot of scientific equipment and the like use serial ports... Parallel ports are great because anyone can just build a sensor on their own and interface it to a computer... it simplifies integration of simple circuits to a pc... No fancy digital processing required....





To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[ChipDeath]

Hey... The company I work for still has some old DOS products that need ancient ISA serial ports, and don't even work with the PCI ones you get on modern motherboards (well, any motherboard newer than 6 years or so...)

We keep having to get custom-built ones with an ISA slot in, and shove in a ISA Serial card whenever a customer's ancient 486 breaks and we need a replacement...

It's hard to convince customers to pay money for new 32-bit windows software when the stuff they've been using for 9 years does the job fine....[sad]

---
:tongue:

 

[jihiggs]

serial is far from extinction. i wish i had more than two, i use them for multimedia buttons mounted in a break out box, and another for an ir remote control. the parrallel port controls an lcd screen for winamp time, and track display. its so much easyer to build things for serial and parralel ports, you dont need any processing chips to multiplex the commands into the single pair comunication of usb.

my computer is so fast, it completes an endless loop in less than 4 seconds!

 

[DOOM]

That's pretty dope! Do you have any specs/pics of your rig to share? Did you write your own software to handle those devices?

-DOOM
______________________________

<pre>MOV AX,0040
MOV DS,AX
MOV WORD PTR [0072],1234
CLI
JMP FFFF:0000</pre><p>

 

[Crashman]

You can upgrade those dead systems by replacing them with old Pentium 1 systems! Cheap!

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[LumberJack]

... and by cheap I mean free...

To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!

 

[Crashman]

If you don't have a lot of spares, Pentium 1 systems go for aroun $30 to $50 working. They make great replacements for dead 486 systems in industrial apps.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>

 

[LumberJack]

well the mobos are hard to find... I go to comp shows several times a year.. and there is always atleast one hooth giving away junk ... like old HD's, floppys, and P1's in large boxes

To err is human... to really screw things up you need a computer!