No serial ports on latest motherboards?

Looking for a motherboard for my next system (Intel, Z68 chipset), the
ones I've looked at so far have no serial ports.

My older machine, built on a P4PE board, has two, with DB9 connectors
brought out to the rear of the case.

My newer machine, built on a P5B-E board, has one, but with just a
header on the board and no external connector.

Now it seems that the serial port's been abandoned entirely.

I have equipment that's controlled via a serial connection and many
USB-serial adaptors don't work correctly.

Have all makers abandoned serial ports on all their boards?

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN

Bert Hyman wrote:
Looking for a motherboard for my next system (Intel, Z68 chipset), the
ones I've looked at so far have no serial ports.

My older machine, built on a P4PE board, has two, with DB9 connectors
brought out to the rear of the case.

My newer machine, built on a P5B-E board, has one, but with just a
header on the board and no external connector.

Now it seems that the serial port's been abandoned entirely.

I have equipment that's controlled via a serial connection and many
USB-serial adaptors don't work correctly.

Have all makers abandoned serial ports on all their boards?


This is really a question, of the evolution of SuperI/O chips.

The SuperI/O was essential for certain functions, and other
functions were placed in the chip as well. Two serial ports
would typically be placed inside the SuperI/O. This means
the motherboard manufacturer was buying the chip for an
essential function, and the other functions "came for free".

One problem with the SuperI/O design, is it is "pin bound".
Some of the pins, had as many as five signal definitions. If
you wanted to drive the floppy interface with all possible
bells and whistles, perhaps that prevented a serial port from
being used. Or perhaps some of the functions would conflict
with additional fan control ports (drive three fans versus five).
The SuperI/O had plenty of functionality inside, but the pins
limited what could come out. It's actually a pain in the ass,
to select the functions to include.

The motherboard designer would then make choices, based on
"motherboard market segment", as to what functions should be
selected from inside the device.

In some cases, it would appear they're just "being mean" and
discarding functions for no reason. This is partially to do
with companies like Intel, declaring certain interfaces to be
legacy (replaceable by USB, at extra cost to the customer).
Of course, USB hasn't always provided a perfect solution
(such as parallel ports, which are still best provided via
a PCI card).

Enough interfaces on the SuperI/O have been declared legacy/unnecessary
that it has allowed the definition of the SuperI/O to be changed. No
longer, does the designer have to choose a relatively high pin count
SuperI/O, if virtually all the functions have been removed. So the
temptation to gut the design is there for the taking.

These are typical functions inside a SuperI/O of five years ago.

LPC interface (how the SuperI/O is connected to the Southbridge)

Game Port --- long gone
Midi --- long gone (UART-like ???)
GPIO (used for motherboard custom control functions)
Hardware monitor (Measure voltages, measure temps, control fans)
PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse --- half-hearted support, declared legacy
Floppy --- some boards still have these, not many
UART A,B --- mostly gone
IRDA (another UART, not the 4Mbit version of IRDA, sucks)
Parallel Port --- a few boards still have a motherboard header for it
ACPI functions (wake on PS/2 kbd, mouse, UART wake on ring,
hardly needed if the other interfaces are gone)

Out of that mess, the hardware monitor still sees some usage. If you want
to measure motherboard voltages, there isn't an equivalent function hiding
inside some other chip. Things like GPIO are also available to a limited
extent on chips like the Southbridge.

You may not know it, but PCI slots are falling into a similar
status. I think Intel has made a Southbridge, without a PCI interface.
While this can be fixed, by using something like a PLX PCI Express x1 to
PCI bridge chip, motherboard manufacturers won't patch up the mess
forever. Even though PCI remains a cheap way to get add-in functions.

You could try a PCI serial card. In terms of direct hardware access,
I presume they show up in PCI address space. So not all software
may properly see them. If you were running the computer with DOS,
perhaps such a card wouldn't be visible. You'd need to check whatever
tech info is available on the manufacturer's site, to discover limitations
like that. This is an example of a company making add-in cards, where
sometimes they address usage with older OSes.

http://www.lavalink.com/dev/index.php?id=55

Good luck,
Paul

Have all makers abandoned serial ports on all their boards?

Do you really need a Z68 chipset board?
Even my Intel DQ68EP Mini-ITX Board still has a serial onboard connector.

Regards
Fritz

In "Friedrich Wuelfing"
wrote:

Have all makers abandoned serial ports on all their boards?

Do you really need a Z68 chipset board?

Need? What's that mean?

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN

Do you really need a Z68 chipset board?

Need? What's that mean?

Well, the Z68 chipset is the overclocker's highend version.
There are several different version of the socket 1155 chipset.

Please check the INTEL site what you really need,
see the D_6 series versions he
http://www.intel.com/products/deskto...=desk_nav+chip

There are indeed socket 1155 boards with serial connector available.

Regards
Fritz

In "Friedrich Wuelfing"
wrote:

Do you really need a Z68 chipset board?

Need? What's that mean?

Well, the Z68 chipset is the overclocker's highend version.
There are several different version of the socket 1155 chipset.

You miss my point.

I don't NEED the Z68 chipset, I simply WANT to build my system around
it, at least at the moment.

Some of the features just sound like they'd be nice to have.

Maybe I'll reach a more sensible conclusion later.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN