Serial port Windows. Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time (in contrast to a parallel port). Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data was transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals, and various peripherals. While such interfaces as Ethernet, FireWire, and USB all send data as a serial stream, the term "serial port" usually identifies hardware more or less compliant to the RS-232 standard, intended to interface with a modem or with a similar communication device. Modern computers without serial
Sun-1 It was also the console port if no graphical display was installed in the system. Serial port B was wired as a Data Terminal Equipment (DTE) port and had no modem control. Both serial ports could also be used as terminal ports and quite often were allowing 3 people to use one workstation, although two did not have graphical displays. The 16-bit parallel port was a special purpose port for connecting 8-bit parallel port keyboard and 8-bit parallel port optical mouse for workstations with graphical displays. The parallel port was never used as a general purpose parallel printer port. The