Serial RS232 PCI Card x 2 ports

The serial PCI card - Generally.

The serial PCI card is an easy and reliable way of adding serial ports to your computer. When shopping for a serial PCI card it is important that you choose a serial PCI card which is suitable and compatible for your serial device and computer. Of high importance is the serial PCI card chipset. There are many models and brands of chipsets, we recommend a serial PCI card chip from either Moschip or FTDI, these processors have proved to be effective and reliable in most applications. The typical serial PCI card contains one or two serial COM ports however it is also available in multi-port versions.

Once the drivers for the serial PCI card has been successfully installed a COM port will show up in your operating system's Device Manager where you can configure several port settings, if your serial PCI card has good drivers. Some cards with poorly written drivers cannot be configured. The COM port that shows up in Device Manager, created by the serial PCI card and the drivers can be used as if it was a built-in COM port.
Since the COM ports created with a serial PCI card are actual physical COM ports, not virtual COM ports, they can be used with almost any serial device, even latency sensitive devices since there are no data delays. Unlike USB based serial cards which due to the virtual COM port drivers have a substantial data delay which can make communication with some sensitive serial devices impossible.

When shopping for a serial PCI card be aware that the socket will match your computer. A regular conventional serial PCI card will have either a 50 pin or a 68 pin contact header. Depending on the voltage the serial PCI card is using it have wither 1 or 2 key notches that will fit into the particular connector inside your computer. The serial PCI card we are selling are compatible with both 3.3V and 5.0V so regardless of which voltage your computer supplies our card will fit. You can read much more about PCI cards at Wikipedia.

Some low-cost serial PCI cards has jumpers which needs to be set in order for you to be able to communicate with a particular device. This is kind of old fashioned since most newer serial PCI cards are automatically configurred to match your serial devices's settings. You will however still be able to adjust several port settings in your operating systems device manager, such as baud rate, data bits and in some cases timing.