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Re:The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used by gertrunde on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @05:11AM (#28614382)
These days I suspect that something like a toughbook might be the only option for those sort of ports - although that GPD Micro PC does look quite fun.

Even 10-15 years ago, proper serial ports were becoming extremely rare, but there are times when you need a proper one.

Around that time we resorted to pc card/express card serial ports for occasions when USB to serial isn't good enough, although they were relatively expensive (3-4 times more than a USB serial dongle).

(The use case in that scenario was field engineers connecting to a very wide variety of odd equipment, like fire alarm panels and door entry systems, that sort of thing - USB dongles were massively inconsistent and unreliable - different dongles would be compatible/incompatible with different kit, was a right mess).

Obviously, these days, express card slots are also quite rare.

(The alternative is hauling out my old IBM T22, which I think maybe came with Win98... mostly still works apart from the battery).

Re:The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used by iso1210 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @07:54AM (#28615322)
Serial is less useful as you need a serial cable, so if you're going to carry a serial cable you might as well have one with USB on the end.

If you're going into an RJ45 serial connection (like I am at the moment), then an ideal laptop would have multiple RJ45s which could be used as either 10G or serial with a standard cat5 cable (not a specially wired one).

Re:The Framework is the most exciting laptop I've used by fomine3 on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @10:23AM (#28616626)
Maybe good news: GPD Micro PC seems to have ITE IT8987E for serial port rather than USB-Serial chip. https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/column/hothot/1166289.ht...