Very few computers manufactured in the last few years have more than two serial ports. In fact , the vast majority of newer PCs, desktops, and notebook computers are outfitted only with USB ports, and don’t have any serial ports. Unfortunately, however, many computer peripherals including some printers, modems, PDAs, and digital cameras have serial ports, so a usb serial adapter is necessary to solve the connectivity problems posed by these devices. USB to Serial adapters are available in2, 4, 8 , and 16 port versions, permitting you to connect as many serial devices as you need.
If you have a notebook computer and you need more parallel or serial ports, a cardbus serial or parallel adapter will solve you connectivity problem. Serial cards range from one to four serial ports, and parallel cards can have one or two parallel ports. A serial or parallel card can be plugged into any cardbus slot on your computer and is ready to go. While if you have multiple interface types that you need to connect, a pci serial card will do the job, providing both kinds of connectivity from a single card.
Adding an external IDE hard drive to your computer is a quick and easy way to enhabce its storage capacity almost indefinitely, since you can use more than one. This is quite simple to do by employing a usb ide converter . All you need to do is hook up the USB IDE cable to the port on your computer.