3 ms·
"There are companies in Taiwan/China making custom X86 barebones/motherboards using modern hardware and old ports but they're low volume and destined for the in
by squarefoot 5y ago
"There are companies in Taiwan/China making custom X86 barebones/motherboards using modern hardware and old ports but they're low volume and destined for the industrial market so they have eye-watering prices."
Many of those small industrial grade mainboards, especially the Mini-ITX ones, are also employed in game / slot machines and have plenty of serial ports, GPIOs, etc. There's a market for used ones on Ebay and elsewhere.
There also are cheap PCI-E to RS232 adapters that cost less than 10 bucks delivered, so serial ports aren't really a problem unless one needs them on a laptop.
Actually there are also moderately priced Mini-PCIE to RS232 adapters, but bringing flat cables out of a laptop doesn't seem that practical.