Thinkpads Forum

I remember that there are some Targus port replicators on ebay.

Does anyone here have any experience using USB to serial adapters? Does software or firmware simply supply a port address which is read from or written to like a real serial port?

Yes. I've used the USB->rs232 dongles and they do work. Though windows is a bit finicky sometimes.

fwiw, there's also "rs232 over ethernet" solutions...
http://www.digi.com/products/terminalse ... erlite.jsp
... which are useful if you have to connect to multiple serial devices from a single host.

At work we use several USB to RS232 converters in an industrial setting (PLC, scale indicator, laser measurement devices). Never had any problems, even with the generic ones.

Recently I've been able to find Billionton's converters locally, so we're buying a whole bunch of those. Not that they're more reliable or anything, but having a working website with drivers is really helpful sometimes.

My USB->Serial dongle works fine out of the box in both linux and windows. XP alerted and asked permission to install the drivers itself, and off it went by itself.

Sometimes it can depend on the chipset. Mine uses the "Future Techology Devices International, Ltd" chipset and it's fine.