«

my old ibm laptop has finaly gone back to its maker so i have
a temporary compaq repacment. Its nice enough but it does not
have a serial port! what gives? god know whay they still have
parallel ports.

So my dilema is what to replace it with do i pick out the best
laptop and get a usb to serial thingy or are there still leading
edge machines with serial ports i like the idea of integrated
wirles and bluetooth.

I have heard that the usb serial devices cannot send a break
so i may be in trouble if i need to recover a password. Is there
any truth in this?

all reccomendations and advice greatly recieved

Tom

Tombo <> wrote:
> I have heard that the usb serial devices cannot send a break
> so i may be in trouble if i need to recover a password. Is there
> any truth in this?

My Notebook has no serial port either. So I bought an UC-232A USB
Serial adapter. All seems to work like through a normal serial port,
I can even send break signals through it.


Cheers, Daniel

In article <402ac9ec$0$34265$>,
Tombo <> wrote:
>my old ibm laptop has finaly gone back to its maker so i have
>a temporary compaq repacment. Its nice enough but it does not
>have a serial port! what gives? god know whay they still have
>parallel ports.
>
>So my dilema is what to replace it with do i pick out the best
>laptop and get a usb to serial thingy or are there still leading
>edge machines with serial ports i like the idea of integrated
>wirles and bluetooth.
>
>I have heard that the usb serial devices cannot send a break
>so i may be in trouble if i need to recover a password. Is there
>any truth in this?
>
>all reccomendations and advice greatly recieved
>
>Tom

Microsoft has decreed that serial ports are legacy hardware and must be
abandoned...so the lemmings follow. Of course they said the same thing
about the parallel port, and that disappeared for awhile also, but
enough people are still using their old printers that the parallel port
has been making a comeback. But the normal consumer/business user has no
need for a serial port (now that the modem is built in), so there has
not been the same pressure.

While slightly less convenient (one more thing to carry), a USB to
serial dongle can work just fine. You do have to be selective, as not
all capable of generating a break, not all are compatible with any OS
other than Windows (or even all versions of Windows), and some are
bigger/heavier than others. But good ones do exist. I've been living
with one for two years now (IBM X23 running Linux, generic dongle based
on the FTDI chip).

Good luck and have fun!
--
Vincent C Jones, Consultant Expert advice and a helping hand
Networking Unlimited, Inc. for those who want to manage and
Tenafly, NJ Phone: 201 568-7810 control their networking destiny
http://www.networkingunlimited.com

In article <402ac9ec$0$34265$>,
says...
[snip]
> I have heard that the usb serial devices cannot send a break
> so i may be in trouble if i need to recover a password. Is there
> any truth in this?

Some don't. www.iogear.com search for GUC232A

Works just fine.


--

hsb

"Somehow I imagined this experience would be more rewarding" Calvin
*************** USE ROT13 TO SEE MY EMAIL ADDRESS ****************
************************************************** ******************
Due to the volume of email that I receive, I may not not be able to
reply to emails sent to my account. Please post a followup instead.
************************************************** ******************

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 04:46:45 GMT, Hansang Bae <> wrote:

>In article <402ac9ec$0$34265$>,
> says...
>[snip]
>> I have heard that the usb serial devices cannot send a break
>> so i may be in trouble if i need to recover a password. Is there
>> any truth in this?
>
>Some don't. www.iogear.com search for GUC232A
>
>Works just fine.

I'll second that one. Works for me too.

Mike Patterson
Please remove the spamtrap to email me.

"Hansang Bae" <> wrote in message
news:...
> In article <402ac9ec$0$34265$>,
> says...
> [snip]
> > I have heard that the usb serial devices cannot send a break
> > so i may be in trouble if i need to recover a password. Is there
> > any truth in this?
>
> Some don't. www.iogear.com search for GUC232A
>
> Works just fine.
>
>
> --
>
> hsb
>

An interesting note about this device... I recently bought one to use on my
XP laptop. When I put it in, XP automatically installed the drivers -
didn't need the cd. Then, this device seemed to always hold one char in the
buffer - so my typing was one char off. I went back and installed the
drivers from the disk and it worked fine. Also, I tried downloading drivers
from their site. Although the site lists a recent date for the drivers,
what you really get is older ones. So, my lesson here is to be sure to hold
on to the cd. It works great once you get the drivers in from the disk.