On Saturday 05 February 2005 8:28 am, phil wrote:
Anyone any experiences with USB to serial adaptors - and good/bad suggestions? I've hear the Belkin one possibly works OK. I have a java ignition controller project that has to communicate via RS232, and haven't any system with a serial port. Also, anyone have one of these lying around redundant that they'd like a few beer tokens for?
All of the USB-Serial adapters I have encountered seem to have latency issues, in the past I have supported some engineers with laptops who used serial interfaces to some production line equipment and the only thing I could get to work reliably for them was the Brainbox PCMCIA Serial port card.
www.brainboxes.com
AFAIK Brainboxes repleased GPL drivers for most of their cards a while ago, check first but getting the card to work in Linux should be easy. But be warned that these cards are not cheap.
if you are dealing with a desktop then you may well find the serial ports on the systemboard, have not been brought out to the back panel.