Tuesday 14 June 2011

RS232 and you.

    As any good electronic engineer will tell you, RS232 has been around for a long time. Since the 1960's and until recently has been found on the back of computers across the world. So why has this blast from the past lasted so long and why is it worth us learning about it. Well in a nutshell it's quick simple and easy to learn, there is nothing more simple than an RS232 connection, secondly it is pretty much everywhere: It has been around since the 60's meaning you won't have any trouble finding documentation online for it and the amount of support it gets from consumer devices is still getting strong. However recently it has been fading away, my PC no longer has an RS232 connector on the back so I had to get a USB to RS232 cable which works perfectly. If you were to get into any type of data coms I would recommend looking into RS232 as it is a great way to learn how the communication works exactly and from there it is easy to build up into more advanced systems.

23 comments:

  1. Aren't these also commonly known as VGA? With DVI and HDMI becoming so popular, you won't see these nearly as much, except on laptops. Unless you have a mac. Then you are just screwed.

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  2. No it is what people used before USB. RS232 is a serial communication protocol for transmitting data. VGA is a different connector also (although similar) it has a lot more pins than the RS232.

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  3. I haven't seen one of these on a computer in a long time.

    Interesting note about learning how these work as a way of understanding how more complex computer data transfers take place- I might look into it.

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  4. they have fixed the unbroken! and made it smaller I guess :/

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  5. I have no fucking clue as to what you are even talking about.

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  6. That's nostalgic, serial port is not longer being included in standard mobos

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  7. im with mrs pickle on this one lmao

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  8. crazy how some tech things disappear immediately and others last for 50 years.

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  9. Um I am not sure what your talking about lol

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  10. sweet. I always wondered what the purpose of these things.

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  11. I seem to remember these but I'm not sure. Used to be used to connect up printers and the like?

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  12. thanks for the info :) keep it coming!

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  13. lol to mrs pickle! great info, + following :)

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  14. im still using rs232 on one computer at my work!

    Greetings,
    funny-randomstuff.blogspot.com

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  15. its a shame that old connections like this disappear ive got loads of devices in the garage that use it

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  16. This is a smart system, if you ask me :) followed

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  17. Thanks for sharing, that's cool! Keep it coming. :)

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  18. never realised that it's been around since the 60's. we had computers back then?

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  19. RS232 is epic, I still use it sometimes :DD

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  20. You can't ignore RS232's girth.

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  21. great post and great blog + following

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