3 ms·

I have a weird old nylon cutting machine connected to a DOS machine over a serial port. It would not work with a USB/RS-232 adaptor?

zozbot234 4y ago
USB-serial conversion would add a measurable amount of latency, and the access to USB hardware would occur under a non-real-time OS. Whether the setup "works" would be highly hardware-specific. There are modern industrial "PC" boards that are essentially a i586 implementation in a SoC and can run these workloads far more reliably, while consuming a lot less power compared to old x86 hardware. (They're also of interest to retrocomputing enthusiasts, for largely the same reasons.)
petre 4y ago
That's orecisely how we run our thread 3D printer. It even has a serial (UART) to USB chip on board and it's connected to a RPi3 boc running Linux and Octoprint.
coryrc 4y ago
It probably won't if they do weird things with the flow control pins or if the timing really matters, but serial is far more likely than parallel to keep working.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Yeah this is why industrial PCs still have those physical ports.
wildzzz 4y ago
Spend no less than $20 on a USB to serial converter and you'd probably be fine. Anything with an FTDI chip in it are the best. Anything with a Prolific chip has a good possibility of being counterfeit will either not work well or the legit driver will try to brick it.
- 0x0 4y ago
  FTDI pushed driver updates that bricked counterfeits... https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/31/ftdi_accused_of_bricking_counterfeits_again/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/31/ftdi_accused_of_brick...
arbitrandomuser 4y ago
Depends on the adaptor too. Cheap ones only have Rx and TX pins . The rest of the pins are not connected. If your device only used Rx and Tx it would work fine . If it uses functionality of other pins make sure you get the right adaptor

3 ms·

I have a weird old nylon cutting machine connected to a DOS machine over a serial port. It would not work with a USB/RS-232 adaptor?

by mcculley 4y ago

zozbot234 4y ago
USB-serial conversion would add a measurable amount of latency, and the access to USB hardware would occur under a non-real-time OS. Whether the setup "works" would be highly hardware-specific. There are modern industrial "PC" boards that are essentially a i586 implementation in a SoC and can run these workloads far more reliably, while consuming a lot less power compared to old x86 hardware. (They're also of interest to retrocomputing enthusiasts, for largely the same reasons.)
petre 4y ago
That's orecisely how we run our thread 3D printer. It even has a serial (UART) to USB chip on board and it's connected to a RPi3 boc running Linux and Octoprint.
coryrc 4y ago
It probably won't if they do weird things with the flow control pins or if the timing really matters, but serial is far more likely than parallel to keep working.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Yeah this is why industrial PCs still have those physical ports.
wildzzz 4y ago
Spend no less than $20 on a USB to serial converter and you'd probably be fine. Anything with an FTDI chip in it are the best. Anything with a Prolific chip has a good possibility of being counterfeit will either not work well or the legit driver will try to brick it.
- 0x0 4y ago
  FTDI pushed driver updates that bricked counterfeits... https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/31/ftdi_accused_of_bricking_counterfeits_again/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/01/31/ftdi_accused_of_brick...
arbitrandomuser 4y ago
Depends on the adaptor too. Cheap ones only have Rx and TX pins . The rest of the pins are not connected. If your device only used Rx and Tx it would work fine . If it uses functionality of other pins make sure you get the right adaptor