this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Honest question, what do you use these ports for apart from VGA? I never used anything but VGA but these ports look the same.
They look similar but a VGA port has 15 pins and a serial port has only 9. Serial ports like this one were really common before USB was used. You would plug peripherals into it kind of the same way you use a USB port. Mice were probably the most common use, but you could plug a lot of different things into them.
Of course it is like USB since the S in USB stand for serial; Universal Serial Bus.
I don’t remember if RS232 was plug and play or hot swap though. I think you might have had to boot with those plugged in. PS/2 I think you could? And of course USB you can. Good times.
Yes and no. They could be unplugged and replugged without a reboot. But also you'd have to manually configure the communication parameters of the port. So I hesitate to say "hot swap".
there's a similar looking plug for serial, RS232