Depending on your existing build, this may not be the case. Thankfully, there are plenty of PCIe serial port adapter cards available on the market.īut a built-in card will only work if you’ve got an open PCIe slot. In most cases, you’ll need to connect via PCIe, instead. This is becoming more and more rare, though. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find one with an optional RS232 module. It took over the consumer market almost overnight, and remains the current RS232 standard for industrial and commercial use.īecause it’s an old standard, RS232 is no longer found on most modern motherboards. This has a smaller plug, as well as only nine pins for fewer points of failure. For most applications, only a few pins were used anyway, so the DB-9 connector was released in the 1990s. But even back then, manufacturers recognized the drawbacks of such a massive plug. This plug (the DB-25) was used on a lot of 1980s printers, as well as on some industrial machinery. Early RS232 ports were very large indeed, and had a whopping 25 pins. This makes it not just compact, but also presents fewer possible points of failure. A USB plug is very small, and only requires five pins. The last significant drawback of RS232 is the size of the plug. For example, computers can transfer files over the internet, or connect to peripherals via Bluetooth. For applications that USB isn’t suitable for, wireless and Ethernet technology has sometimes taken RS232’s place. That’s why a USB hub works, and it’s why you can make a single USB hub with multiple RS232 ports. In addition to that, a single USB port can be used to connect multiple devices simultaneously. That’s 3,100 times as fast as RS232, which tells you all you need to know about what it’s capable of. The current USB standard, USB 3.1, is capable of transfer rates of 3.1Gbps. So if you want to connect multiple devices, you’ll need multiple large ports on the back of your computer.Ī USB port, by comparison, is significantly more capable. In other words, you can’t use a hub to connect multiple devices to a single RS232 port. Another major limitation is that RS232 is capable of a 1-to-1 connection only. Even for a modern mouse or keyboard, you’ll oftentimes need a faster connection than that. But nowadays, 1Mbps is essentially useless if you want to use a cable for data transfer. By 1960s standards, this was insanely fast, and far more than anyone would ever need. The biggest limitation of the RS232 standard is the rate of data transfer: 1Mbps. Other than that, the two ports are entirely different, and have virtually nothing in common. This means they send and receive data in sequences of packets, which come in one after another, or serially. What makes them different, other than the obvious difference in plug size? To begin with, both of them are serial ports. Let’s take a closer look, and zoom in on all the details!īefore we talk about how this hub works, let’s talk about RS232 and USB. We’ll talk about what devices it’s compatible with, as well as how to set it up. To fully understand how this adapter works and what it’s capable of, we’ll have to dig deeper. But that’s just the bare minimum of what you need to know. This is a 4-port RS232 hub, which connects to your computer via USB. With that in mind, we’re about to review the DriverGenius 4XRS232 4 Port USB to DB9 RS232 Serial Adapter Hub. If RS232 is still good enough for the job, industrial machines will still use it.īut what if you want to control an RS232 device with a modern computer? In most cases, you’re going to need an RS232 to USB adapter. But industry likes tried and true technology. For home use, RS232 has been obsolete for some time, superseded by the more-versatile USB standard. Not only that, but it found a home in industrial applications, for connecting manufacturing and tooling machines. As PCs became mainstream, it became a favored standard for connecting all kinds of peripherals. RS232 was first used in the 1960s for accepting computer inputs from electromechanical keyboards. One of the oldest – and most enduring – serial connections is RS232. As a result, there’s a healthy market for adapters, hubs, and other devices to aid in connectivity. There have been a number of standards throughout there years, used for all different kinds of purposes. Not only that, but USB is only one kind of serial connection. And within those, there are various standards, such as USB 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1. There’s standard USB (Type-A), there’s Type-B, Type-C, Micro USB, and even Mini USB. USB is an excellent example the “U” literally stands for “universal,” but it’s far from universal. Over time, few things about computers have remained less consistent than wiring standards.
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