Serial port on Dell Laptops (2009)

The only Dell laptop with integrated serial port is the Latitude E5500. Also the old series D630/D830 has this, but these are pretty much discontinued.

But you can purchase the E-series legacy extender that connects through the docking port on E6400/E6500 or other laptops in the e-series.

Which of the current available laptops still has a serial port integrated into it.

NONE.

Hardware timing for the RS232 ports usually doesnt work with new machines due to poorly written 

serial i/o routines.

ExpressCard 34 to Serial I/O (RS-232) DB9 1 Port Host Adapter ...

http://www.synchrotech.com/products-expc/expresscard_34_serial_rs232_adapter_01.html

Synchrotech's high performance ExpressCard 34 toSerial I/O adds a fast serial COM port to mobile computers for attaching fax/modems, bar code scanners, court reporters, data acquisition equipment, mag stripe readers, GPS receivers, digital cameras or other RS-232 serial devices. The ExpressCard's low power requirement won't burden a laptop's batteries. The ExpressCard Serial Adapter supports serial transmission rate up to 230400bps.

Features

• Fully compliant with ExpressCard 34mm wide module Specification 1.0
• Supports Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, and Vista
• Fast 16550 UART supports baud rates up to 225Kbps
• Includes industry-standard DB-9 connector
• Meets FCC and CE safety standards
• Hot insertion and removal
• CE Approved

Another one to try would be

Newegg.com

StarTech.com 1 Port 16950 ExpressCard Serial Adapter Serial adapter - ExpressCard/34

Hi luckyme2,

I would like to confirm that shik is correct in his analysis.

We are an engineering company and we rely heavily on the RS232 Serial Port on a daily basis to communicate with industrial instrument devices.

We have chosen Dell as our Laptop of choice for our Engineers because of the following:

Full UART RS232 Serial Port on Mainboard, 1920 x 1200 screen resolution & Gold Technical Support

We have been using D800's, D810's, D820's and D830's and are looking to upgrade the D830's next year.

We need a high screen resolution of 1920 x 1200 because of other applications.

Unfortunately, the USB to Serial Port adapters are not a good solution for us. This is because the RS232 port on the USB adapters have a limited implementation of the RS232 electrical interface standard. They are good enough to use with simple RS232 devices but more often than not we experience,  timing issues especially with fast serial protocols and when using virtual machines for legacy support. We have tried many USB to serial converters and are of the opinion that a motherboard based RS232 UART port is the only reliable solution that will work every time.

With regards to the port replicator, I have had experience in the past with blue screens and the dell port replicators. There is also the obvious inconvenience of having to lug it around to sites.

Ideally we would like Dell to maintain the RS232 port on the High End Latitudes going forward, this would ensure our commitment to the Dell product.

hi speedstep,

thanks for your advice. I will be sure to give the ExpressCard Serial Adapter solution a go.

Hopefully it will work on one particular legacy protocol we use which has tight timing issues.If it will work with this protocol, we then it will work with all other serial protocols we use.

I hope to have good results to post back.

Cheers.

My friend! Help me out to narrow down discontinued (used) model of dell for a full advantage of above mentioned UART RS232. For instance would be D620 be OK ?

Dell Vostro A860 comes with a serial Port ,

Here are the specifications of the Laptop

Visit:

http://anadigisystems.com/info.php?id=37

speedstep,

Did this solution work?

mbserialport,

Did this adapter work?  We have the same issue.

Hi empireman,

We did not try out the starcom card as recommended by speedstep above.

We did however try the Quatech SSPXP-100 Expresscard 34mm. The card has 1 x RS232 port and it has worked well for us. We would still however prefer a native RS232 port on the laptop motherboard.

You can find the datasheet for the Quatech SSPXP-100 expresscard card at http://www.quatech.com/catalog/expresscard_performance.php

We purchased it from B&B Electronics

http://www.bb-elec.com/product_family.asp?Familyid=414

If you happen to find a laptop with 1920 x 1200 (WUXGA) resolution with an RS232 serial port onboard please let me know.

Dell Latitude e5510 is the best one with a serial port.