What is COM 1? (compared to USB)

Moose · Post by **Moose** » Mon 07 Apr, 2008 8:19 am

I use virtual ti and wabbit emulators to help with my asm learninz, but one little thing annoys me. I'd like to link between vti and my calc, but there is no usb option for the input into my computer (like there is with ti connect, but they have a really crappy emulator). I do however see these COM 1, COM 2, etc...

What exactly are these, and can I use them with a fairly new laptop?

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Mon 07 Apr, 2008 11:48 am

I think it is some sort of ancient serial link thing that hasn't been around for about 10 years..
Could be wrong though

brandonw · Post by **brandonw** » Mon 07 Apr, 2008 8:41 pm

They're serial ports.

If your laptop doesn't have serial ports (and it probably doesn't), you can either buy a USB<->serial adapter, which may or may not work (more than likely not), or you could form some sort of bridge between one of the COM ports and something else. I can't really give any advice on this, but I used to use serial port software long ago to link two separate emulators together by bridging two COM ports.

Post by **Dwedit** » Tue 08 Apr, 2008 1:35 am

Some Laptops still have serial ports, because you use serial ports to reprogram a candy machine. Serial ports are too useful to get rid of them.

Timendus · Post by **Timendus** » Tue 08 Apr, 2008 6:08 pm

Man, I feel old...

"What is a COM port?"

King Harold · Post by **King Harold** » Tue 08 Apr, 2008 7:07 pm

Just like diskettes, they mostly disappeared

and can I use them with a fairly new laptop?

Probably not, modern external serial devices use almost exclusively USB

Post by **Dwedit** » Tue 08 Apr, 2008 7:47 pm

My lappy amazingly enough has a serial port. Maybe that's because it's a "Business Notebook", and business people still want to use serial connections for their PDAs.

blueskies · Post by **blueskies** » Sat 12 Apr, 2008 9:09 pm

My laptop has serial, and it's not that old...ok 5 years is pretty old in computer years. I've only used it for the link cable anyway.

Post by **benryves** » Sat 12 Apr, 2008 10:05 pm

Timendus wrote:Man, I feel old...

"What is a COM port?"

Heh, yes, my thoughts exactly.

Serial and parallel ports are really useful, given how easy it is to hook up devices of your own invention to them (USB et al are much more involved). I still use my parallel port frequently (the cable for sending files to my TI, a Master System joypad, a PlayStation joypad and a Game Gear flash cart) as well as my serial ports (programming microcontrollers, to create a network with my old DOS computer for transferring files or playing games).

Fortunately you can still buy PCI expansion boards to add these handy legacy ports to new PCs! USB adapters aren't too good, as they usually only offer a very limited bridge between the original protocol and USB, meaning that if you try and control the ports on a lower level (as is required by TI data transfer cables to toggle the state of individual pins) they won't actually do anything.

Floppy disks are slightly different, as you still need them to install XP in certain situations (ie, 3rd party RAID drivers). Much to my surprise, my modern PC has no PS/2 ports, no parallel port, no serial ports, and no IDE controller - but tucked away on the motherboard is a floppy disk controller and an unused (I'm running Vista) ribbon connector socket.

Post by **qarnos** » Sun 13 Apr, 2008 10:51 am

benryves wrote:my modern PC has no PS/2 ports, no parallel port, no serial ports, and no IDE controller

Modern PC's suck almost as bad as Macs in this respect. I remember hooking PC's together will null modem cables to play Duke3D. If you set yourself up right, you could see your opponents screen in the mirror. Those were the days.

Everything's going wireless these days - but what's the point if you cant have cables running everywhere! It looks so cool.

brandonw · Post by **brandonw** » Sun 13 Apr, 2008 10:57 am

qarnos wrote:I remember hooking PC's together will null modem cables to play Duke3D. If you set yourself up right, you could see your opponents screen in the mirror. Those were the days.

That was me in freshman typing class, only it was Doom. Only one computer had it, so I had to span it across multiple floppies and carry it over to the other Windows 3.1 machines. Memories...