[ale] USB to Serial adapters

[Jeff Lightner]

Back when I first started on UNIX nearly everything was serial so people
used dedicated ports boards (DigiBoard, Stallion, Computone etc...) for
terminals, printers, modems etc...   I also saw a lot of system
interfaces that required serial connections.

I'm just curious what people are doing these days that requires multiple
serial ports.  For most of what I've been doing for the 10 years or so
the only real use for serial was console and modems and even that isn't
extensive due to KVMs and the like.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Daniel Kahn Gillmor
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 11:57 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] USB to Serial adapters

On Wed 2008-06-18 10:13:20 -0400, Ken Cochran wrote:

> Any recommendations (maybe a FAQ/site/info) for *supported*
> and/or recommended USB-to-serial adapters for Linux/BSD/MacOSX?

the Prolific chipset ("pl2303") is far and away the most stable one of
these i've ever used.  It works well on Linux.  i've never tried it on
*BSD or OSX, but a google search looks promising [0] [1].

If you're setting up a rig with a lot of serial ports, my notes for
doing that [2] include an 8-port USB pl2303-based adapter (which i've
never used, but i'd love to hear any experiences with it).

When i was writing up my notes on setting up an all-solid-state mini
machine [3], i found a pl2303 adapter for about $18 [4].

It's often difficult to find a vendor who publishes what chipset
you'll get in their devices, which is pretty aggravating.  However, it
doesn't hurt to ask, either.

hth,

        --dkg

[0] http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=uplcom&section=4
[1]
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/pl2303usbtoserialdriver.ht
ml
[2] http://cmrg.fifthhorseman.net/wiki/cereal#hardware
[3] http://cmrg.fifthhorseman.net/wiki/embedded/alix/purchasing
[4] http://www.beaglesoft.com/232usb.htm
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