speakup and serial hubs?

[Justin Ekis]

Hi all:

What  I was hoping for was an external box which could do this 
trick, 
but I see that's not realistic at all. I thought I remembered the 
computers at school having a box that connected to the port and gave you 
four serial ports. Thinking about it more carefully I now remember it 
was only a switch box and only one at a time would work.

Really bad question, guess I'm out of luck. I don't know that I have any 
free slots available for a card either and wouldn't feel comfortable 
installing one if I did.

This isn't even related to Linux now so respond off list if you 
like. Is this something that I could go into a computer shop and have 
upgraded? Would I perhaps have to get a new motherboard installed or 
something drastic like that and how much would it cost?

Justin
On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 02:47:30PM -0800, Chris Gray wrote:
>Hi Justin:
>
>Due to the nature of the RS232-C serial specification, there are 
>complications about having something put together like a serial hubb. 
>The serial hardware alone takes a fair amount of electronics, the way 
>way serial ports are implemented through the motherboard doesn't lend 
>itself to a hubb like you see today with USB devices.  It's a creative 
>question though.
>
>Before USB, there were lots of board made that attempted to do what you 
>are suggesting, or variants of that.  Enough serial devices still exist 
>that you might be able to find such a device today.  Typically, these 
>were boards that had 4, or more separate serial ports on them, with a 
>ton of jumpers to modify IRQ and port addresses.  Beware of cards with 
>connectors that are just nullcross-overs for the same port; those won't 
>help you.  You must have separate, discrete ports and 
>connectors/jumpers to them.
>
>whether you can find such a card that's both PCI and 
>affordable is an interesting question. I called a local, relatively 
>large computer store here in San Francisco Central Computers, because 
>all this made me curious and they have fairly decent customer service. 
>I'm slightly surprised, but It turns out they have a high speed i/o card 
>with two ports for $19.99 from Vitex, it's even in stock!  If they carry 
>it, I bet you could order something from Comp USA if you've got the 
>patience, or find something localy or online.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>Chris