data throughput of serial ports?

[excalibur3]

I have a computer that is a few years old. I think that it might be a pentium 4. I want to hook up three things that use serial ports. The computer only has one serial port so I was thinking about getting a two serial port pci card. I think that the data throughput of modern computers is enough that it can handle three serial channels going at their full speed, but someone else insists that it isn't possible. Would someone be able to clear this up?
Thanks!
Stephen

 

[techmanc]

Should have no problem speedwise as long as the card is capable and doesnt cause resource conflict.

 

[corkyg]

In that situation I would install a powered hub (7 slot) into that port and not be concerned about power drain in the system.

 

[techmanc]

Are we talking serial as in USB or as I thought the old style COM port?

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: excalibur3
I have a computer that is a few years old. I think that it might be a pentium 4. I want to hook up three things that use serial ports. The computer only has one serial port so I was thinking about getting a two serial port pci card. I think that the data throughput of modern computers is enough that it can handle three serial channels going at their full speed, but someone else insists that it isn't possible. Would someone be able to clear this up?
Thanks!
Stephen

It's more than possible. Most pc supported up to 4 ports when serial ports were popular.
Throughput isn't an issue as even 8 ports wouldn't hinder a pci bus. Serial maxes out at 115Kb/sec. It would take 264 serial ports before a pci bus couldn't handle the traffic

Edit:
Corrected
Been working with spi too much today.

 

[Phynaz]

115kb, not 115KB.

 

[Zepper]

standard PC RS232 serial ports are capable of at least 115.2k bits /sec. There are better ones that can go quite a bit higher. the 115.2 is only an actual 11.5 k Bytes per sec (allowing for protocol overhead) so no reasonable computer will have a problem with any standard serial ports (I've had one card with 8 serial ports and they'd work fine on "ancient" hardware). USB is another story but most PCs come with at least four of those these days.

.bh.

 

[Colt45]

should be able to do it without breaking a sweat. I seem to recall running an 8 port card at full tilt on a 486 or something like that. lol

 

[dbcooper1]

As long as you have three interrupts to spare, you should be fine.