Poll: How many of you still use a parallel or serial port?

[Bateluer]

I haven't used either in years, since 2002 at least. My dad still has to use a serial port for programming machine controls. Its funny to listen in on his conversations with sales people when he tries to buy a new machine or notebook. At BB he just gets blank stares, when on the phone with Dell, he gets belligerent and angry when they tell him they don't have any systems with parallel or serial ports with the specs he wants.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: xSauronx

Originally posted by: spidey07
I absolutely have to have a serial port when I put my hands on network gear. I was given a laptop with no serial port one time. WTF! You can't give a network guy a computer without a serial port.

I was waiting for this post. I expected that if this was in the networking forum it would be almost all YES

i dont use either, at the moment, i expect that to change in the fall.

<---forced to use an adapter since his current pc doesn't have one

 

[oogabooga]

I use serial at work for testing modems, pinpad devices, and signature capture devices.

At home, I don't have a use for it.

 

[Quiksilver]

no...

 

[LtPage1]

I have never once in my life used either. True story.

 

[GeekDrew]

I don't use parallel for anything any more, but we use serial on a *tremendous* number of machines at my office. Connected to things such as line printers, barcode readers, temperature collection devices, alarm systems, network devices, etc.

 

[Modelworks]

Mainly for interfacing with chips.
I do wish that more things did have serial ports on them . If you don't need high speed, it is a much easier interface to work with. Parallel port I use for a laser printer.

 

[herm0016]

Originally posted by: Leros
I use the serial port to program microcontrollers.

this

my basic stamp is serial too.

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
At work I do to connect to various pieces of equipment like PLCs, flow computers, VFDs, etc. It blows me away that in the 21st century I'm still connecting to industrial equipment via comm port.

Do you understand what serial is/does? It's perfect for industrial applications, that's why most people haven't and won't try to get off the 232 or 485 standard.

 

[Apathetic]

I still use a serial port to connect to various network devices. I haven't used parallel in a long time.

Dave

 

[Eeezee]

Nope

Along similar lines, it pleases me whenever I see computers without PS/2 ports. I haven't used a PS/2 keyboard in forever, nor a PS/2 mouse in forever*2. Let's phase that shit out already; you could easily fit 4 USB ports wherever you have 2 PS/2 ports.

Serial and Parallel are archaic, too. I'm fairly glad to see them disappear.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Nope, haven't used parallel, serial or PS/2 in years. The computer I bought in February doesn't even have the parallel or serial ports. And it has an HDMI port instead of VGA.

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: Gooberlx2
Nope, haven't used parallel, serial or PS/2 in years. The computer I bought in February doesn't even have the parallel or serial ports. And it has an HDMI port instead of VGA.

It doesn't even have a DVI port? That's odd. I'm not surprised VGA is being phased out, but I didn't think they would get rid of DVI already.

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: thepd7

Originally posted by: Megatomic
At work I do to connect to various pieces of equipment like PLCs, flow computers, VFDs, etc. It blows me away that in the 21st century I'm still connecting to industrial equipment via comm port.

Do you understand what serial is/does? It's perfect for industrial applications, that's why most people haven't and won't try to get off the 232 or 485 standard.

Isn't USB just a very fast serial port? Why can't they switch all this equipment to USB? Some microcontrollers already use a USB interface.

 

[crystal]

Parallel for HP 2100s Laser Jet printer at home. That thing still going strong after all these years and I am not replacing it anytime soon.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: thepd7

Originally posted by: Megatomic
At work I do to connect to various pieces of equipment like PLCs, flow computers, VFDs, etc. It blows me away that in the 21st century I'm still connecting to industrial equipment via comm port.

Do you understand what serial is/does? It's perfect for industrial applications, that's why most people haven't and won't try to get off the 232 or 485 standard.

Yeah, it's just slow and my day to day laptop doesn't have any. Our Toughbook broke last week and I have no way of attaching to our PLCs and whatnot. I've gotta find a USB to Serial adapter before the plant needs me to have one.

 

[Vehemence]

Originally posted by: skyking
I use serial almost every day to work on voicemail, phone systems, and network switches.
Parallel? nah.

This.

 

[Phoenix86]

Many business class HP laserjet printers have parallel+bay options. They don't come with USB by default.

 

[Brainonska511]

I don't even have a parallel or serial port on my laptop. At home, the desktops my parents and little brother use don't use those ports either. I think we might use a few at work though, either for hooking up a label maker (parallel port) or hooking up LC/LCMS machines to computers.

 

[Aikouka]

No. All of my devices use bluetooth or USB. Even my UPS uses USB .

 

[mooseracing]

Serial is used by alot of Hardware and Software engineers. I use serial only when first getting a router or switch.

 

[BurnItDwn]

My printer is on my parallel port. It's pretty new, only 10 or so years old.
I have an old X10 firecracker on my serial port. I don't have a light switch in one of the rooms of my house, so I use my X10 thing that I got for like $5 in 1996 to control the lamp. Also have it hooked up to another lamp in the adjacent room.

I know they make USB printers now, but the one I have works decently enough for my needs. Also, I still have toner in the toner cartridge, I did replace the toner 2 or 3 years ago, so I probably only have a 4 or 5 years worth of toner left. (I print less than 500 pages per year.)
Once this printer runs out of toner, then I'll consider buying a new low end laser printer.

 

[Paperdoc]

Was using a parallel port for HP LaserJet 4 at home until recently, then I put a print server module on it and converted it to a network resource. So now the printer is still using its parallel port, but all the computers access it via network.

At our retail store the customer receipt printer is a 15-year-old Star SP300 unit (dot matrix on rolls of 3" wide plain paper) connected to the POS computer via Serial Port (COM1).

Still have an external FAX Modem on a Serial Port on one machine at home in case I want to FAX something from it, or for dial-up backup in the rare event the DSL connection is down.

 

[hellokeith]

Originally posted by: Riverhound777
I use Parallel on HP 4000n I got from work. I use Micr toner on it too, lol.

HP printers are workhorses I tell you!

 

[thepd7]

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: thepd7

Originally posted by: Megatomic
At work I do to connect to various pieces of equipment like PLCs, flow computers, VFDs, etc. It blows me away that in the 21st century I'm still connecting to industrial equipment via comm port.

Do you understand what serial is/does? It's perfect for industrial applications, that's why most people haven't and won't try to get off the 232 or 485 standard.

Isn't USB just a very fast serial port? Why can't they switch all this equipment to USB? Some microcontrollers already use a USB interface.

Well, C# is better than C, why isn't everyone using C#?

It's an ancient, really solid standard. It will be around for much longer in industry.