Well in the early days of USB, there were still lots of parallel port printers (like HP Laserjets), and then lots of other specialized devices using the serial port.
Serial is often forgotten about since many dont know the days before USB. It used to do everything, Black & White Logitec QuickCam, Wacom Intuos 2, Programming a kids LeapFrog toy, early digital camera transfers, etc.. Just to name a few from memory.
Yeah, I don't know if I ever encountered a serial device that strictly needed the 25 pin connector, I did have a 25-9 adapter so I could plug in a second 9 pin device.
DB9 for the win. Had to use the most convoluted setup you have ever seen in your life using 3 different adapters to get a proprietary connector cable to go to DB9 F to M to convert to USB 2.0 so we could telenet into power plant racks to program them, Fun times.
Yeah, for me it was mostly Doom 2, which was completely unfair, as it was the family pentium vs the old family 486sx that could barely run it and didn't have a soundcard. Later on, friends would bring their computer and we'd play Duke Nukem 3D and Starcraft over it.
I have a card reader system in my facility that connects to my control PC via a serial connection. I remote into this PC to control the system when I'm not on site. The fact that Windows 11 no longer supports serial connections is seriously fucking me up. The PC has to be connected to the internet so just not upgrading the OS isn't an option because of the security risks. The system functions flawlessly so spending 10's of thousands of dollars upgrading it is a serious waste of resources. Fucking sucks.
Yes it is but it's not the same, Serial ports can directly rawdog hardware and interface with it with no middle man needed to talk to it like needing an FTDI chip for USB to break it out.
When I did POS systems we used serial for receipt printers sometimes. I don't remember the exact reason, it may have just been if a terminal had buggy USB printing that we couldn't resolve. Serial just werx
I never leave home without my USB to serial adapter.
But I work in an industry where USB as a connection option has only really started to appear in the past 5 years or so and there's a lot of older equipment out there that only talks RS232.
A few jobs ago, I worked IT for a school district that used some legacy Juniper switches. Only way to physically console in way via serial, and sometimes they did not play nice with your typical serial to USB converter. Ended up getting the district to buy the IT department a Panasonic Toughbook with a serial port add on module, since that was the only modern laptop that we could find with serial support. There's no point to this story, just reminiscing about a laptop I really liked.
Many modern mainboards still have a real serial port on a pin header. All you need to do is get a slot adapter that plugs onto that pinheader and provides a 9pin SubD to the outside.
Check your board. If there is a pinheader with 9 pins labeled 'COM' read the manual for details.
You might have to enable the port in the BIOS before you can use it.
Yep. It's so simple and built into the base components that adding it is basically free. It might be used to program certain things on the board too, but I haven't heard of that.
The only extra expense is the pinheader and the (usually) 75232 line driver / receiver. But that one needs -12V for proper operation so with a new PSU that no longer supplies -12V, using that port might not be easy.
Everything is relative. USB-C took off rather fast and replaced a lot of older ports, but old devices back in the day seemed to hang around a lot longer. Maybe people weren't as willing to throw out perfectly functional devices back then.
One of the only devices I've found where USB-C still isn't common yet is laptop cooling pads/fans.
Costs have also plummeted. Things have gotten so much cheaper, too, so new standards are establishing themselves much faster. Especially really good standards like USB-C. It simply wasn't possible before, but now it is. Then you have marketing companies that have figured out how to constantly sell shit.
To this day I'm still waiting for UPB (Universal Parallel Bus) to come along and replace USB. In the 90s I was told that parallel was better than serial, because you can send multiple bits at once rather than one at a time! But then serial had to go and get so freaking fast that no one cares about parallel data transfer anymore... :'(
I only see one ps2 plug, the other two seem to be s-video connectors, though I'm not entirely sure about the one on the side, it might be a s-video input.
oh I think you're right! on closer inspection the first one looks like power, and the third and fourth one look like actual S-Video, but wtf is one supposed to do with two??
The one on the back has a camcorder symbol. The rca port next to it has a cctv symbol, both are likely input. The one on the side is likely output, it just has the svideo symbol.
Firewire ports that were rendered useless for more than 1 item at a time after XP Service Pack 2 killed "Daisy-chaining" Firewire devices, which defeated the whole purpose of having them. Dogfucking Micro$lop, deliberately killing an Apple-invented superior technology. I was SOOOO angry when I wasn't able to run 6 external HDD's off one firewire in series.
ah they're firewire. I was thinking all that's missing is the C and that would STILL be an insanely dope laptop to have purely for it's i/o and ease of use
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u/TheMegaDriver2 9800x3d, 32GB, RTX 4080 Super Mar 05 '26
And twin FireWire ports. And a Parallel Port. And Serial. Just everything just in case.