I Bought A New Personal Computer-Should I Bother Adding Serial Ports?

[KC8Y]

I've acquired a PC in Dec, 2010...It had NO RS232 ports, only 4-USB ports.  I also have fairly new accessories (7) & not one of them have connections using the RS-232...Had to purchase an additional USB-Extender (, since I use my PC for additional tasks...Glad I did...

Ken-KC8Y

[NW0LF]

I have to agree with AA4PB.  On my job, we have VERY specialized printers that use high density parallel printer cables.  I am talking 5 figure American made printers, not cheap foreign equipment.  I know this is a serial converter discussion but I want to point out that these printers do not work with USB to parallel adapters.  We tried a number of them and could not get them to work.  For the new equipment deployed we have our latest and greatest core i7 laptops but for these printers, we still have our old Dell latitude D600 laptops with parallel ports and will continue to use these for testing until the last of the old printers are removed from the field. I would prefer to use legacy cards based on that experience, though I have used a USB to serial adapter in the past.  And yes, I do have a computer dedicated to only ham use- an older dual monitor Dell Optiplex GX270 running Win7( just fine thank you) with a MB serial and parallel port and an add on 6 port USB 2.0 card for a total of 12 USB ports.  I use the USB ports with flash drives for HRD database backup and Windows readyboost,  but have the serial port for either my MFJ sound card interface or Small Wonder Labs PSK20 transceiver kit if I want to go digital.  Oh, by the way, I do also have a stash of IDE hard drives  .

Wolfie, K9WLF

[KM3K]

They are only as problematic as you make them. I find them to be very reliable.

The person, who wrote these sentences, must lead a charmed life.

I personally have had problems with two different kinds of USB-to-RS232 adapters connected to my Dell laptop running Vista:
1. RadioShack's Gigaware works with my AIM-4170 and the Keyspan won't (please note that W5BIG and I spent days trying to get the Keyspan to work the AIM).
2. Keyspan worked with my Yaesu FT-950 via Logger32 but RadioShack's Gigaware won't.
Figure that conundrum out.

Now, because my grandchildren do their homework on the laptop, I've bought a new HP-Pavilion p6-2021 running 64-bit Windows7 and neither adapter works my FT-950.
Just to comment....I have the latest drivers from the respective manufacturer's website and do pay proper attention to COM-ports, baud-rate, etc.

Interestingly enough, my six year old Dell desktop with its built-in RS232:
1. ran the AIM4170 with no problems,
2. does everything very nicely in Logger32.

Life is too short to waste on getting USB-to-RS232 adapters to function; I'm now shopping for a RS232-card for the HP.
73 Jerry KM3K