There's been at least one other thread on this - albeit from someone who had several multiport PCI-E serial cards in a 2950 and was having problems with his setup crashing with a Blue Screen of Death.
Dell won't support the setup because they don't supply or warrant the performance of any serial cards. However, it should simply involve selecting a PCI-E card with the appropriate number of ports and drivers for the operating system you use.
Google digs up several possibilities. I'd be tempted to go for the simplest card you can - but maybe fit one or two extra ports. If you need one extra port, I'd probably fit a dual port card and have one port left over. If you need two or three extra ports, I'd probably fit a quad port card.
Serial port cards are likely PCI-E x1, so you can put the card in the x4 slot and keep the two x8 slots you likely have in the server (assuming both risers are PCI-E) over for other cards that need the extra lanes.
david.j.wood
145 Posts
0
July 17th, 2008 12:00
There's been at least one other thread on this - albeit from someone who had several multiport PCI-E serial cards in a 2950 and was having problems with his setup crashing with a Blue Screen of Death.
Dell won't support the setup because they don't supply or warrant the performance of any serial cards. However, it should simply involve selecting a PCI-E card with the appropriate number of ports and drivers for the operating system you use.
Google digs up several possibilities. I'd be tempted to go for the simplest card you can - but maybe fit one or two extra ports. If you need one extra port, I'd probably fit a dual port card and have one port left over. If you need two or three extra ports, I'd probably fit a quad port card.
Serial port cards are likely PCI-E x1, so you can put the card in the x4 slot and keep the two x8 slots you likely have in the server (assuming both risers are PCI-E) over for other cards that need the extra lanes.