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18. Other Serial Devices (not async EIA-232)

18.1 Successors to EIA-232

A number of EIA standards have been established for higher speeds and longer distances using twisted-pair (balanced) technology. Balanced transmission can sometimes be a hundred times faster than unbalanced EIA-232. For a given speed, the distance (maximum cable length) may be many times longer with twisted pair. But PC-s keep being made with the "obsolete" EIA-232 since it works OK with modems and mice since the cable length is short. If this appears in the latest version of this HOWTO, please let me know if any of the non-EIA-232 listed below are supported by Linux.

18.2 EIA-422-A (balanced) and EIA-423-A (unbalanced)

EIA-423 is just like the unbalanced EIA-232 except that the voltage is only 5 volts. Since this falls within EIA-232 specs it can be connected to a EIA-232 port. Its specs call for somewhat higher speeds than the EIA-232 (but this may be of little help on a long run where it's the unbalance that causes interference). Since EIA-423 is not much of an improvement over EIA-232, it is not popular except on old Mac computers.

EIA-422 is twisted pair (known as "balanced" or "differential) and is (per specs) exactly 100 times as fast as EIA-423 (which in turn is somewhat faster than EIA-232). Apple's Mac computer prior to mid-1998 with its EIA-232/EIA-422 Port uses it. The Mac used a small round "mini-DIN-8" connector. It also provided conventional EIA-232 but at only at 5 volts (which is still legal EIA-232). To make it work like at EIA-232 one must use a special cable which (signal) grounds RxD+ (one side of a balanced pair) and use RxD- as the receive pin. While TxD- is used as the transmit pin, for some reason TxD+ should not be grounded. See Macintosh Communications FAQ. However, due to the fact that Macs (and upgrades for them) cost more than PC's, they are not widely as host computers for Linux.

18.3 EIA-485

This is like EIA-422 (balanced = differential). It is half-duplex. It's not just point-to-point but is like ethernet or the USB since all devices (nodes) on it share the same "bus". It may be used for a multidrop LAN (up to 32 nodes or more). Since many nodes share the same twisted pair the need to use the electrical tri-state mode where besides the 0 and 1 binary states there is also an open circuit state to permit other nodes to uses the twisted pair line. Instead of a transmitter keeping a 1-state voltage on the line during line idle, the line is open circuited and all nodes just listen (receive mode).

The most common architecture is master/slave. The master polls the slaves to see if they have anything to send. A slave can only transmit just after it's been polled.

There is an alternative implementation where two pair of wires are used for sending data. One pair is only for the Master to send to the Slaves. Since no one transmits on this line except the master, there is no need for it to be tri-state. Thus the Master may just be EIA-232 but the slaves must still be EIA-485. See http://www.hw.cz/english/docs/rs485/rs485.html for more details.

18.4 EIA-530

EIA-530-A (balanced but can also be used unbalanced) at 2Mbits/s (balanced) was intended to be a replacement for EIA-232 but few have been installed. It uses the same 25-pin connector as EIA-232.

18.5 EIA-612/613

The High Speed Serial Interface ( HSSI = EIA-612/613) uses a 50-pin connector and goes up to about 50 Mbits/s but the distance is limited to only several meters. For Linux there are PCI cards supporting HSSI. The companies that sell the cards often provide (or point you to) a Linux driver. A howto or the like is needed for this topic.

18.6 The Universal Serial Bus (USB)

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is being built into PCI chips. Newer PC's have them. It is 12 Mbps (with 200 Mbps planned) over a twisted pair with a 4-pin connector (2 wires are power supply). It also is limited to short distances of at most 5 meters (depends on configuration). Linux supports the bus, although not all devices that can plug into the bus are supported.

It is synchronous and transmits in special packets like a network. Just like a network, it can have several devices attached to it. Each device on it gets a time-slice of exclusive use for a short time. A device can also be guaranteed the use of the bus at fixed intervals. One device can monopolize it if no other device wants to use it. It's not simple to describe in detail.

For documentation, see the USB directory in /usr/share/doc/kernel ... It would be nice to have a HOWTO on the USB. See also http://www.linux-usb.org and/or http://.www.qbik.ch/usb/.

18.7 Firewire

Firewire (IEEE 1394) is something like the USB only faster (800 Mbps is planned). The protocol on the bus is claimed to be more efficient than USB's. It uses two twisted pair for data plus two power conductors (6 conductors in all). A variants uses only 4 conductors. You may compile firewire support into the Linux kernel. Like USB, it's also limited to short distances.

18.8 Synchronization & Synchronous

Beside the asynchronous EIA-232 (and others) there are a number of synchronous serial port standards. In fact EIA-232 includes synchronous specifications but they aren't normally implemented for serial ports on PC's. But first we'll explain what a synchronous means.

Defining Asynchronous vs Synchronous

Asynchronous (async) means "not synchronous". In practice, an async signal is what the async serial port sends and receives which is a stream of bytes each delimited by a start and stop bit. Synchronous (sync) is most everything else. But this doesn't explain the basic concepts.

In theory, synchronous means that bytes are sent out at a constant rate one after another in step with a clock signal tick. There is often a separate wire or channel for sending the clock signal. Asynchronous bytes may be sent out erratically with various time intervals between bytes (like someone typing characters at a keyboard).

There are certain situations that need to be classified as either sync or async. The async serial port often sends out bytes in a steady stream which would make this a synchronous case but since they still have the start/stop bits (which makes it possible to send them out erratically) it's called async. Another case is where data bytes (without any start-stop bits) are put into packets with possible erratic spacing between one packet and the next. This is called sync since the bytes within each packet must be transmitted synchronously.

Synchronous Communication

Did you ever wonder what all the unused pins are for on a 25-pin connector for the serial port? Most of them are for use in synchronous communication which is seldom implemented on PC's. There are pins for sync timing signals as well as for a sync reverse channel. The EIA-232 spec provides for both sync and async but PC's use a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) chip such as a 16450, 16550A, or 16650 and can't deal with sync. For sync one needs a USART chip or the equivalent where the "S" stands for Synchronous. Since sync is a niche market, a sync serial port is likely to be quite expensive.

Besides the sync part of the EIA-232, there are various other EIA synchronous standards. For EIA-232, 3 pins of the connector are reserved for clock (or timing) signals. Sometimes it's a modem's task to generate some timing signals making it impossible to use synchronous communications without a synchronous modem (or without a device called a "synchronous modem eliminator" which provides the timing signals).

Although few serial ports are sync, synchronous communication does often take place over telephone lines using modems which use V.42 error correction. This strips off the start/stop bits and puts the date bytes in packets resulting in synchronous operation over the phone line.


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