Though if you wanted to part ways with it, you can pick up an FTDI USB serial adapter for cheap. Though if it has a parallel port, hold on it it. Parallel ports USB adapters are just printer adapters and don't work for general parallel port use.

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

USB serial adapters sometimes have compatibility issues. Hardware serial ports have interrupts, while USB serial ports can only be polled at a limited rate.

There are serial and parallel PCIe cards available that work much better than the USB adapters. Some modern desktop motherboards still have a serial port, but it's usually a pin header that will need an adapter to connect to. There is also a nearly pocket sized laptop with a serial port and more connectors than many full size laptops have.

[–] wjrii@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

My B450 motherboard is pretty long in the tooth, but still firmly a "modern" component. I just added a Serial port via its built in header to use an old "Spaceball" for CAD. It only works in a few Windows apps, which is a shame because it's completely a software issue and it works PERFECTLY in the apps that still support it. Linux as well, though I've only tried that via a USB-Serial adapter on my laptop.

[–] reboot6675@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 years ago

Yes I was surprised too! It runs smooth and physical condition is great. The battery is dead tho haha

And I think it doesn't have a parallel port unfortunately.