Batboard

Well, just had my trusty laptop stolen that I use for my windows based CPS\RSS. Had all my cables, WiFi card, inverter, etc. in the bag. Went missing out of my backseat of my pickup while i was away on a short float plane trip last week. I'm pretty sure the sus. watched me leave. He probably even waved bye bye to me!.......

Now I'm faced with replacing this unit and of course, new laptops do not come with a good ole' serial port anymore, just usb. Anyone having any luck with USB to serial converters?? What is the rest of the Mot. world using to work around this??? I quickly tried searching for the answer in the posting but didn't get very far.

Just so you all know (it came as a surprise to me) the insurance claim for my loss will be in excess of $6000 (cdn) after taxes. Fortunately, deductible is only $500 and insurance is replacement cost. I love my broker! The underwritter is ING Insurance and my broker tells me that they are really good to deal with and among the very few that will provide replacement cost business insurance.

Thanks all for your assistance!

Blueboy

Look @ Dell's.

A large number of the latitude series comes with serial ports. D505's come to mind.

IBM should sell a number of their thinkpad's with serial ports.

If your looking in your normal consumer electronic stores, don't expect to find a ton of laptops with them.

-Alex

I've got an IBM A31 ThinkPad, which is still a current model, and they still have serial ports. They ain't $500 though!


Randy

I'm using a Dell 600m, and one of the reasons that I bought it was for the serial port (plus the battery run time is outstanding).

If you dig a little more with the search function, you should find that this has been covered a number of times.

The quick summary is this: USB to serial converters seem to have a lot of problems (although some people have been able to get away with them, so far), while PCMCIA serial port cards have proven to be consistently solid and reliable.

If you can't get a machine with an RS232 port, I would reccomend the PCMCIA serial card.

Thanks guys! This helps a lot.

The Dell Latitude D600 has a serial port, and a port for a full dock (not just a port replicator) which is important in my book. Take a look - I love mine.

New computers can still be had with a serial port, but it jacks the price way up! A Dell model without the port costs roughly $1100, a comparable model with a port is approx $2100...according to our I.T. guys, anyway. They hate the fact we insist it has one...along with needing DOS & Win98.

I've only used one set of PCMCIA serial cards...it worked great in Windows for everything I needed, but unfortunately this particular card didn't have DOS drivers, so I couldn't test it in DOS. I have no doubt a card with the proper drivers would work just fine.

Todd

Wav, your IT guys are on crack. Probably just an excuse to not buy them. My Inspiron 8600 has both USB, Serial, and even a Parallel port. Lots of models still have it.

I have an $850 Compaq (I know...junk) with a SIIG brand PCMCIA card from CDW that gives a true serial port. Works great!

The SIIG card was $119.00

The Inspiron 8xxx line of laptops is Dell's most expensive, yet it is NOT the fastest thing on earth. Sure it has all the ports one would ever want, but you can get twice the speed for much less money with a lower model number or even the Latitude series.

I'm using an I8000, 850 MHz, and just over 3 years old. Works fine for MSF5000 and MaxTrac/Radius radios. Won't work with HT600s - too fast ! Haven't tried it with my GTX handheld, but a 1996 Pentium 100 MHz laptop works fine for that radio.

Bob M.

I use a Toshiba P25. No serial port, but the USB/DB9 adaptor from IOGEAR works fine. Never had a problem with it.

nmfire10 wrote:Wav, your IT guys are on crack. Probably just an excuse to not buy them. My Inspiron 8600 has both USB, Serial, and even a Parallel port. Lots of models still have it.

As kcbooboo pointed out, the Inspiron series is the most expensive. Notice I said the models with serial ports were more expensive. My Dell Latitude C540 contains all the ports your does, but it's approx 18 months old. The newer Latitude series doesn't offer serial ports, except for the higher models (hence, more expensive). My dollar figures may be off slightly, but they are in CDN funds don't forget.

Todd

I have a Dell Lattitude D600 with Serial, Parallel and USB for about $1200 retail. We bought these just for the serial port. Otherwise we would have bought the cheaper $600 laptop (Inspiron?).

blueboy wrote:Well, just had my trusty laptop stolen that I use for my windows based CPS\RSS. Had all my cables, WiFi card, inverter, etc. in the bag. Went missing out of my backseat of my pickup while i was away on a short float plane trip last week. I'm pretty sure the sus. watched me leave. He probably even waved bye bye to me!.......

Now I'm faced with replacing this unit and of course, new laptops do not come with a good ole' serial port anymore, just usb. Anyone having any luck with USB to serial converters?? What is the rest of the Mot. world using to work around this??? I quickly tried searching for the answer in the posting but didn't get very far.

Just so you all know (it came as a surprise to me) the insurance claim for my loss will be in excess of $6000 (cdn) after taxes. Fortunately, deductible is only $500 and insurance is replacement cost. I love my broker! The underwritter is ING Insurance and my broker tells me that they are really good to deal with and among the very few that will provide replacement cost business insurance.

Thanks all for your assistance!

Blueboy

i use this USB to serial converter to program my HT1550XLS:

http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/sear ... 1=104+0475

i see no reason why such a converter would be a problem with the windows based CPS. it's worked 100% for me. trying something like this with DOS RSS would be another story, but then if you're trying to run DOS RSS from within windows to begin with...

I have had great success using a Targus (not sure who really built it, it just has the Targus name on it) USB to serial converter programming the HT1250 and the CP200 on a 1.2 Ghz Dell Inspiron 1100 under WindowsXP Pro.

nmfire10 wrote:Wav, your IT guys are on crack. Probably just an excuse to not buy them. My Inspiron 8600 has both USB, Serial, and even a Parallel port. Lots of models still have it.

I bought one from Dell® last month... The newer models DO NOT have a serial port, a parallel port, or a track stick on them.
You can buy a Dell port replicator and that has a serial and parallel port on it (for $170!).

I am not sure why they eliminated them! Probably trying to boost profits at the expense of the few people who actually still need them.

Not that It maters but I am looking at a Dell ad and the only laptop that has a serial port is the 600M. It is not the most expensive model at $1299 base price.
I have installed 95 of them in the past month and only had two bad ones.

There's lots of similar 'no serial port' threads in the database, so I just picked a more recent one to update.

I just installed & tested a fantastic little PCMCIA serial port card from QUATECH. The model I tested was the SSP-100, single port serial card. The CD comes with drivers for all the different Windows platforms, and for DOS as well. The DOS drivers are provided as a courtesy, they aren't supported any longer by QUATECH. I found this to be the case with all the manufacturers I looked at.

It installed & worked flawlessly in DOS, Win98 and Win2000 on 3 different laptops (2 Dell, 1 HP/Compaq). The DOS was a little tricky, there's a couple of different ways to set it up. There's also some high memory exclusions to enter into the config.sys file, and a few steps to take to have it automatically recognized upon boot-up into DOS.

If anyone is looking at this card & needs help with the DOS set-up, send me a PM & I'll do my best to help you out.

Todd

Socket serial cards are good too.