What is it about some applications that require a physical COM port?

Motherboard level COM Ports on Laptops

I have several laptops in my truck but when a manufacturer's application requires a "real' COM port I pull out a SIIG Windows Cyberserial ExpressCard JJ-EC1012-S2 out for my 64-Bit Windows 7 Professional laptop. It becomes COMM Port 1 like a rear DB-9 RS-232 connector built into the laptop because the ExpressCard (kind of like a mini PCMCIA card slot device) on the laptop allows it to be "part of the Motherboard", thus all applications "looking" for a COMM Port 1 hardware port are happy! :)

https://www.servers4less.com/networ...QZDbizgYBJucp19vo5Eqe2ylnKBp7LRhoCgRoQAvD_BwE
 
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And 2 related questions:
1. Are there any brand-new laptops today, with a physical COM port?
2. Have there been any USB-Serial converters to come out in the last few years which can replace a physical COM port in every way, and interface with these old PLCs?

1) Not that I know of

2) We make USB cables that work with just about every PLC made, you will need DOS Box if you are working with PLC100 or 150

OkiePC said:
I have begun to prefer the one from PLCCable

Thanks Paul!
 
We've been buying Panasonic Tough Books which come with a real serial RS232 port and also a PCMCIA slot. They work great for us and durable for use on the floor with our maintenance technicians.

Check them out.

Jerry
 
We've been buying Panasonic Tough Books which come with a real serial RS232 port and also a PCMCIA slot. They work great for us and durable for use on the floor with our maintenance technicians.

Check them out.

Jerry

I absolutely LOVE toughbooks. Only problem is the only ones I can afford are the refurb units on eBay with lackluster specs.

The first time around I used a laptop with serial port and that was my one-and-only. All my PLC software was installed in the native windows 7, and after accumulating enough SW on one laptop there began to be conflicts and bugs. I had to uninstall some things which I didn't want to do, in order to complete the task at hand.

This time around I want to go with VMware. I want to have a separate VM for each manufacturer so that I don't have Rockwell's background processes fighting with RedLion and Siemens over resources that only Automation Direct really needs at the moment.

I want to have a laptop with enough grunt to run its native OS plus a VM (maybe more than 1 VM). I think I'll make the native OS Linux to make things easier on the machine. But I'd still like to have decent specs.

The refurb units I'm finding on eBay might work if I use a lean Linux distro for the host OS. There's some 2ng gen i7s <2.0GHz for under $1k with serial ports. I'm going to experiment with an older laptop that I have, and see if I can make it work. If so I might settle for an aged eBay toughbook.

Thank you for the suggestion!
 
2) We make USB cables that work with just about every PLC made, you will need DOS Box if you are working with PLC100 or 150

I know the reputation of your products (they're good), so I'm not challenging your claim - I'm asking from a position of curiosity - what is it about your USB>serial converter that makes it successful where others fail?
 
...what is it about your USB>serial converter that makes it successful where others fail?

I can't speak for geniusintraining or his usb-serial converter, but when it comes to USB-Serial converters the ones with the FTDI chipset seem to be the ones that "just work".

I've had good luck with this one. Note I got mine for free from a vendor, so I didn't do much shopping for one.
 
This time around I want to go with VMware. I want to have a separate VM for each manufacturer so that I don't have Rockwell's background processes fighting with RedLion and Siemens over resources that only Automation Direct really needs at the moment.

I want to have a laptop with enough grunt to run its native OS plus a VM (maybe more than 1 VM). I think I'll make the native OS Linux to make things easier on the machine. But I'd still like to have decent specs.

The refurb units I'm finding on eBay might work if I use a lean Linux distro for the host OS. There's some 2ng gen i7s <2.0GHz for under $1k with serial ports. I'm going to experiment with an older laptop that I have, and see if I can make it work. If so I might settle for an aged eBay toughbook.

Thank you for the suggestion!

If you really need a real serial port you might want to rethink your VM approach. Most VMs don't have access to the real hardware because they run virtualized. Hardware passthrough is an option but it can be tricky to say the least.

That said, you don't need a lot of grunt for running VMs. In your usage scenario you'll only be running one VM at a time. I suggest windows as a host operating system for a laptop just because sleep and power saving works better under windows than linux.

Then run VMs in Virtualbox. A machine with a large SSD drive and lots of RAM is what you need. CPU is not very important as long it's a i5 or i7 something.
 
If you really need a real serial port you might want to rethink your VM approach. Most VMs don't have access to the real hardware because they run virtualized. Hardware passthrough is an option but it can be tricky to say the least.

That said, you don't need a lot of grunt for running VMs. In your usage scenario you'll only be running one VM at a time. I suggest windows as a host operating system for a laptop just because sleep and power saving works better under windows than linux.

Then run VMs in Virtualbox. A machine with a large SSD drive and lots of RAM is what you need. CPU is not very important as long it's a i5 or i7 something.

Thank you for pointing these things out. I hadn't considered the difficulty of harware pass-through. I have done VM serial hardware pass-through before, but I was using Windows Virtual PC and the application was not one of these "finnicky" physical-COM-port-only situations. I wasn't even using a physical COM port. I have only ever heard good things about VMWare, but never used it myself, so not 100% sure what to expect.

This will be something that I will experiment with when I go to set up and test my VM laptop. If I can't make it work, then maybe I will need a multi-boot setup. Or just a 2nd laptop; an archaic one, for my archaic software.
 
Big thanks to everyone who has given me pointers! I'm still running down the solutions that have been put forward thus far (various USB>Serial converters, option card serial ports, etc) but I had Another thought:

My laptop at work has no serial port, but it sits in a docking station that does have a serial port. I've never tried to use that port for anything but I wonder if it can be considered a physical COM port when the laptop is docked? What type of bus is that in the connector on the bottom of the laptop? Is that like a neural tap into the motherboard? Should I add a laptop with a docking station incl. serial ports to list of things to investigate?
 
When I was doing service work a few years back I had a Panasonic toughbook CF-52. And so did all the other techs at our company. I loved it. And actually wish I had one at the company I'm at now. I used having everything I needed for any possible connection situation.

I could even plug an SRAM card into it.
Now I have a USB cable, ethernet cable and CF adapter. With a standard laptop, It makes me kind of feel technically naked.
 
Shoot me a PM (since its bed time) but I have a link for you in the morning. Emerson totalflow and pccu along with the other 80 programs you need from them to configure 2 devices would always clutter and cause problems with my com ports, so I found a how to that you can use a little makeshift program that clears out your com ports after use. Works unreal
 
I know the reputation of your products (they're good), so I'm not challenging your claim - I'm asking from a position of curiosity - what is it about your USB>serial converter that makes it successful where others fail?

Thank you! The reason my products are so good is that they were designed and made by the people on this website

As Paully's5.0 said it has to do with the chip set used, we use several as some are better then others for different applications

Guess I still need to know what you are connecting to? I would say 80% of my customers including my self are using VM's and don't have any issues so the cables we make work with VM's and any new or old PLC, so what are your concerns and applications?

If you are connecting to anything new.... you won't have issues because the ethernet ports are built into the PLC
 
Thank you! The reason my products are so good is that they were designed and made by the people on this website

As Paully's5.0 said it has to do with the chip set used, we use several as some are better then others for different applications

Guess I still need to know what you are connecting to? I would say 80% of my customers including my self are using VM's and don't have any issues so the cables we make work with VM's and any new or old PLC, so what are your concerns and applications?

If you are connecting to anything new.... you won't have issues because the ethernet ports are built into the PLC
Man, I wish I could say exactly what my applications are going to be. I'm going to be showing up, sight unseen to places I've never been, to work on equipment that I've never heard of, based on a call from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, telling me nothing more than "that controller quit working."

That scenario might sound hyperbolic but it accounted for literally 50% my service calls in my previous role, and that's the role I'm stepping back into, and I know what to expect.

If I remember correctly, I had problems in the past with older AB like PLC5 and SLC5/00. Also I think some older servo drives (Indramat?) And maybe some older Omron PLCs (C20?) that use a huge clunky LK201 box that bolts to the front of the PLC as a serial interface.

Im not sure about those examples, my memory of these things has been overwritten several times over now. But the point is, the possibilities are infinite and within those infinite possibilities, there's got to be a few thousand applications where an ordinary USB>serial converter wouldn't work. I want all of them to be covered, so I think that means I need a hardware serial port.
 
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