Re: PC components - check mobo has external serial port

At 05:16 AM 12/20/2005, you wrote:
>Tony Langdon is a darn nice person I don't care what anybody says!
> > At 08:52 PM 12/19/2005, you wrote:
> > >Apart from a modem, for what would you use a serial port these days?
> > >Yeah, if you need to do a network install, you do need one but like the
> > >floppy, the serial port seems to have reached its use by date.
> >
> > Console access to networking devices (routers, switches, etc) in my
> > case.  The serial port on my laptop has been used many times for this
> > purpose.
> >
> > Oh, and for radio interfaces... ;-)
> >
>I have a box that requires three seperate serial connections, two 
>radio modems
>( 1 X weatherstation , 1 X 14 radio irrigation network ) plus an old heavy
>duty UPS. Maybe newer gear might just be usb but a SCADA techie I know said
>that USB to Serial dongles are often called for.

I can imagine that the dongles are much sought after in this 
industry.  For the radio stuff I use, some systems still do a bit of 
bit banging on the control lines, so the USB dongles aren't always 
suitable.  Newer systems tend towards standard serial comms.  Hams 
are only just beginning to use USB (mainly due to cost of development 
hardware, etc), and I'm sure within a few years, USB interfacing will 
become the norm.

The sort of radio interfacing I do is where the computer acts as a 
controller for a VoIP or a digital mode.  The latest one to try is 
digital voice transmission.  Unfortunately, the software I've got 
doesn't run under Linux, but if I can locate a Linux version, there's 
the subject for another talk. ;-)

>And one last thing. I'll only buy AMD and I never had any problem with them.
>Things may have changed but it seems to me that Intel has never been very
>inclined towards Open Source and Linux compared to AMD and it often appears
>in the same nest with MS when it comes to things like "trusted computing" and
>other such "industry initiatives" I'll support any hardware vendor who openly
>supports my prefered system.

My experience with AMD has been a bit mixed.  Last AMD I bought 
(XP1600+) had to be underclocked to run stable.  However, these days, 
my inclination is towards AMD (despite the success and stability of 
my P4 running Linux).

73 de VK3JED
http://vkradio.com