USB RS232 conversions

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Alright folks, today we’re talking about making your laptop do a USB RS232 interface. Wow, that’s a lot of jibberish and technical jargon for the first sentence in a post isn’t it? Well, have no fear: This is actually a pretty easy concept to learn, particularly if you’re willing to sit down and do it. This is something that you really only need to be doing if you have a really old laptop that actually has an RS232 adapter (don’t be fooled: RS232 is just a techie way of saying “serial”!). Most newer laptops will not, so this may not apply to everyone. I know that my current computer does not have an RS232 serial input, so I’d have to use a USB RS232 adapter. No worries! There are plenty of those available on the internet just for your ease of use. Today we’re going to talk about what these adapters do, how much they cost, and what you can do with them when you get them all set up.

Alright, first thing’s first: What do these adapters do is make it so that your USB peripherals will interface with your old-style laptop. It’s pretty simple, really. If you have an external hard drive for instance that only allows for USB interface (just about all you see these days), you’re not going to be able to use it without some type of adapter. Keep in mind, however, that bus speeds over an RS232 USB adapter are not going to be what you usually expect from a solid USB 2.0 connection. We won’t really worry about that, however. You get what you get when you have an old laptop, really. If you really want blazing fast USB speeds, you’ll just have to upgrade. ;)

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Prices for a USB RS232 converter are pretty steady across the board: Most of these will run $15-$20, and are available at all sorts of stores that you would normally expect. Fry’s Electronics is a great source of these, but barring that you probably could even find them at Best Buy. If you can’t do that, try for the usual suspects online such as Amazon (see the links below this post for easy shopping), our old friend Tiger, and places such as New Egg. You’re really not going to have to search for long for these, trust me on that.

I honestly hope that this post has answered some questions about how to set up a simple USB RS232 conversion adapter. Best of luck.

Shopping:

USB to Serial DB9 (RS232) Adapter Cable (Garmin compatible) with Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000, MacOS X drivers.
Garmin USB to RS232 Converter Cable for Garmin GPS Units (010-10310-00)
USB to RS232 DB9 Serial Cable + DB25 Pin Adapter / Port Adapter Converter for GPS, PDA, PC, Modem
Startech USB to RS-232 Serial DB9 Adapter with COM Retention
TRENDnet USB to Serial Converter TU-S9 (Blue)

Related posts:

  1. Getting the most out of USB to RS232
  2. USB to serial cable connections
  3. How effective is a bluetooth adapter for your laptop?
  4. Buy a bluetooth computer adapter
  5. Promenade into the world of HDMI

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2 Responses to “USB RS232 conversions”

  1. USB to RS232 on November 19th, 2009 7:02 pm

    [...] you might recall from our previous USB RS232 post, we talked about some of the down sides to using a simple serial connection versus USB. You [...]

  2. USB to Serial Cable on November 20th, 2009 6:44 pm

    [...] we’ve talked about before: USB to serial cable connections. Recently I wrote a post called USB RS232 conversions, wherein we discussed how to connect a USB device to an old laptop that might actually just have an [...]

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