Laptop with serial connection. Suggestions?

January 8, 2009 4:03 PM

I am looking to buy ~10 laptops for a school project. The laptops need to be small (<1> must have a serial connection. Other preferred specs: 1 gb ram 802.11 b/g No webcam Windows operating system I have had a difficult time finding modern laptops with serial connections. Any ideas? I have considered buying a 'netbook' and using a usb to serial adapter but have read that these adapters can be unreliable. I would appreciate any thoughts on that as well.
posted by jdlugo to computers & internet (11 comments total)

What about a EEE style netbook, and purchase some of these: USB Serial Adapters ?

Not sure if there are any netbooks without web cams, but could you just disable them on the machines before handing them out?

Just a couple thoughts....I'm sure finding a serial port these days would be difficult.
posted by AltReality at 4:22 PM on January 8

I've used a USB-to-serial adapter (to connect to a robot microprocessor =p) and it was fine. You'll have trouble getting a laptop with a serial port these days.

Maybe get an old laptop with Win98 or similar? It should be easy to find one on Craigslist or something. No good if you need a decent processor though.
posted by katrielalex at 4:24 PM on January 8

I use these quite often in my line of work, and they are flawless.
posted by deezil at 4:48 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Serial is kinda a dead interface, especially for laptops. I remember seeing some not so recent Lenovos with them, but not any of the newer models.

Serial adapter but have read that these adapters can be unreliable

Depends on the adapter and the application. I think youd be better off buying a couple different brands and trying them with your hardware. This is a good one and its cheap.

I have considered buying a 'netbook'

If you expect adults to type on these then you should really buy one first and test the keyboard. Theyre incredibly small and frustrating to use if you have larger than average hands. Some of the keys are placed in funny places too.

No webcam

You can always disable this in BIOS. Put a password on the BIOS while youre in there.
posted by damn dirty ape at 5:04 PM on January 8

Keyspan USB-to-serial adapters are pretty rock solid, in my opinion.

I've used them in the past to control microscope hardware. Over the holidays, I set one up for my dad to connect his laptop to his Moto Guzzi's onboard computer.

The software that Keyspan provides gives you easy access to COM port settings — you plug it in and get a COM2 or COM4 port, and you use the software to adjust bps, parity and other serial port settings.

Try testing a laptop-of-interest with one of these adapters, and I bet you'll be fine.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:10 PM on January 8

Small world - I have also used Keyspan USB -> serial adapters to control microscope hardware with success. That's the route I would go down.
posted by pombe at 5:25 PM on January 8

Keyspan makes good adaptors, but even they fail to operate with some devices. The good news about USB-serial adaptors is that in my experience their unreliability is more about incompatibility with individual models of device than arbitrary failures. If you'll always be talking to the same device you can find any adaptor that works with it and just get 10 of those. PCMCIA serial cards are also available, and tend to work much more reliably.

Dell is still selling laptops with serial ports, or at least they were less than a year ago when my company got mine. I used it to talk to 5 devices from 2 different manufacturers just today.
posted by contraption at 5:46 PM on January 8

Yeah, we get Dell just for the real DB9 serial port. I feel like Case in Neuromancer with half a dozen different special console adapters and 3 types of cables for various equipment. Yeah, I need a Hakamichi to Nikatomi adapter and a cable with a twist to hook up to this thing... USB things pretty much fail.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:47 PM on January 8

The reason USB-to-anything adaptors have a reputation for unreliability is because programs that bypass the OS and talk straight to the hardware (like drivers for security dongles) will generally not work with them, purely because the serial hardware is not directly available to the processor. Reasonable software that gets the job done by using the port drivers provided by the OS will generally work just fine with a USB-to-whatever adaptor.

If you have mission-critical software that requires direct access to real serial hardware, it will probably work with a serial adaptor that plugs into a PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot, since those will generally make real serial port hardware directly accessible.
posted by flabdablet at 6:48 PM on January 8

Thank you for all your help!
posted by jdlugo at 8:35 AM on January 9

I've owned this Quatech card before and it never gave me a bit of trouble, though the breakout dongle it required always seemed a little flimsy.
posted by contraption at 9:57 PM on January 9