Serial Ports Are STILL Around!

Learn about the history of the classic serial port and why it's still relevant today!

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[deadcmyk]

Almost every piece of equipment that keeps trains running or rail crossings activated in my neck of the US still use serial port for almost everything at my job.

[CrazyNickOO]

You can thank serial ports for your electricity getting to your house too. Substation engineer here, serial is how all of our relays and sensing equipment talk to each other at substations. Like the video said, they just work. Tens of thousands of dollars of leading edge electronics and they still use a cable and connector designed in the 1960s

[Echristoffe]

I am using serial port every day for work.
Generally RS-232 or RS-422/485.
Those thing rock if you don’t need speed.
Cheap, reliable, and you can diy a logic for it…

[neeneko]

I think an important distinction is, well, while it can sometimes feel like it, consumer products are not the whole industry. Consumer tech tends to be rapidly changing, unstable, and locked into a constant upgrade cycle that has more 'keeping up with the neighbors' than actual need. Put another way, consumer tech has more in common with the fashion industry than the rest of the tech space.

Heh.. though it was kinda odd to single out the serial port as 'the thing you connect everything else with', but frame the parallel port as 'just for printers. Parallel ports were also generic workhorses that were even easier to develop for than serial. You did not even need an api or driver or anything, they just looked like an address in memory.

[aikensource]

1 other very helpful use for COM connections: the technology is really easy to emulate, so virtual COM ports are used on Virtual Machines frequently. If you have control over the hypervisor, it's a super easy and useful way to get terminal access as if you plugged a KVM into it, without having to have working networking.

[robomonkey]

In my line of work (Railway) here in the UK, serial/COM ports are used in 99% of the hardware used to run and regulate the railway. I find it interesting because, whilst the technology is superceded by newer technologies, it still beats them because of the reliability / data configuration it provides. Theres also RS-422 for data transmission over longer distances.

[offrails]

Favorite use of the serial port growing up was to link two PCs together (with a null-modem dongle) for quick and reliable DOOM deathmatches before home networks were a thing.

[coolbrotherf]

I worked at an AV company for a few years and actually had to solder together some custom DB9 connectors to connect older electronics to the network. You'd be surprised at how many electronics can still use RS-232 to connect to computers.

[gabeklinger]

I work with an enterprise network, almost all network equipment uses a serial interface for command line /console access. Only difference is they put the serial pinout through a rj45 connector.

[NikosiaMateas]

I used to work in industrial automation, and you'd be amazed at some of the protocols and equipment still in use... Industrial robots still run on floppy discs and CompactFlash. Mitsubishi PLCs often use coax - yes, like TV coax - for data transmission to certain types of equipment. And even in terms of equipment that's just sort of been grandfathered in, there are still machines in active use today using long-obsolete controllers like the Modicon (ca. 1960s) or PLC5 (ca. 1980s).

Unlike tech and IT where it's all about "faster, better, " industrial applications are more a "If it ain't broke, for the love of god don't touch it, we have production numbers to meet" mentality.

[zeronxepher]

Oddly enough, one of my Japanese rhythm game arcade machine still uses serial ports. The PC that it has is a bit more modern but has a serial port for the controller that the game uses. I guess Sega loves Serial.

[darken]

They are still very much alive in the offshore industry too. Screw terminal serial connectors are your best friend for low bandwidth data transmission in applications where cables are likely to get tugged or vibrate free on a regular basis.

[Wunderbolts]

RS-232 is still alive and well in cnc machines. A top of the line machine that my job bought in 2019 still has it and I’m certain that the machines we have arriving next month have them to. Although they also have 10mb Ethernet and we almost always that instead.

[bradleythatcher]

I work for a company here in the US that makes rugged Windows and Android tablets for data collection and rough environments. We still put serial ports on all our devices. It’s a must.

[SRC]

Speaking of old connectors I recently upgraded my CD-ROM drive that had the very old IDE data cable with a Molex plug, to SATA power and data cables. Even the PSU needed to be upgraded.

[mlodan]

I work in enterprise audio manufacturing and we use RS232 for all of our JTAG/pretest and firmware loading, and the ports come standard on all our servers as hard (non-networked) access to their command-line interface

[benjaminbordelon]

In the education space, RS-232 is still ubiquitous when it comes to controlling media systems in rooms, ie projectors, tvs, etc

[TheDaNuker]

Ah, I still remember the days of buying a null modem cable (basically a serial to serial cable with a cross) just to play Quake 2 1v1. It's definitely one of the legacy connectors that aren't going away yet, a USB to Serial Port dongle is still a very important accessory to have for backend IT teams.

[savagepro]

Techquickie has been focusing on PORTS lately!

[jacobdrj]

I work with manufacturing metrology/statistics software...

We use serial ports (and virtual serial ports) ALL THE TIME...

Old standards never die... They just fade slowly away...

The fact that they are so simple from an electrical standpoint is a huge feature too...