That's why laptops with a true RS232 serial port are at a premium for certain applications.<BR><BR>There are *some* USB-Serial bridges that are better than others.

And if you were to go back a few more years into the past, you’d have found when you bought a mouse with a PS/2 connector fitted, it may well have come with an adapter for a 9-pin RS232 serial port.

This was done by using four jumpers to manually connect the RS-232 transceiver points R1OUT, R1IN, T1OUT, and T1IN to the octal buffer, port P2, and the serial communication controller's output TXDA.