Hello,

A friend of mine needs an old laptop that runs XP and has a 9 pin serial port. I am helping him setup a jukebox wall box, currently we have it set up on an old desktop but it's just too bulky for the location it's got to sit in.

So if someone has something looking for a home please let me know. Not looking to spend too much on this so open just about anything to be honest.

Cheers

Cris

Have you ruled out a USB serial adapter? Laptops with serial ports were few and far between ten years ago when they were selling laptops with XP.

Not discounted the idea, but I don't have one to try on the current setup and have that feeling the software won't like it.

But I wouldn't reject an offer is someone has something like that knocking about...

Cheers

Cris

I have several laptops here from up to "10 years ago", and every single one most of them has a built-in serial port. Quite common, not that long ago.

None of them have Windows XP though, and they're all still serving a purpose here.

Cheers

Thanks Mark, I had it in my mind that it was quite common back then.

I can install the OS myself, looking for a fixer-upper rather than something £££

Cheers

Cris

There's a computer/electronics recycling shop just around the corner from us here. They frequently have old notebook computers (10-15 years old) in there for $15-$50 or so.

Perhaps there's a similar style of shop somewhere closer to you?

Cheers

Humn, is it a Windows app? (as opposed to a DOS app which may/may not work as expected - it's been a long while since I wrote a driver to allow a 16 bit DOS app access to a 32 bit driver - I can't even remember what they're called now)

If it's a Windows app (and it's using CreateFile rather than trying to write directly to the IO port using asembler) and long as there's no specific timing that needs to be achieved then I'd expect a USB serial port to work correctly, Microsoft CDC bugs excepted unless you go for something based around an FTDI chip.

May be worth exploring first.