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Rename the serial port?
February 20, 2008

In his column "Serial Ports: TIA-232 ot -485?", former T&MW chief editor Jon Titus wrote "... specified by the TIA-232-F (1997) standard, also called RS-232C, a name held over from years ago."

He continued...

Many people still identify most standard serial ports as RS-232 or RS-232C. The "C" version of the spec went out of date years ago. Likewise, the Recommended Standard (RS) is no longer "recommended:" it exists as a standard under the auspices of the Telecommunication Industry Association (www.tiaonline.org).

 If you see “TIA-232,” do you know that it’s the official designation of the serial port? At T&MW, we still use “RS-232” because it’s the most popular name for the port. In contrast if I write “GPIB” my editors will change it to “IEEE 488,” the official designation of the instrument bus. Should we be consistent and use the official designations for these buses or should we use the more popular names, RS-232 and GPIB? Or, should continue to use the unofficial name for the serial port and the official name for the instrument bus as we have always done?


Posted by Martin Rowe on February 20, 2008 | Comments (4)


February 21, 2008
In response to: Rename the serial port?
Hugh commented:

In my computer hardware classes I face the same question. It's been RS-232 for so long that it's hard to change, and I doubt that most "old timers"will ever change. Perhaps by the time the new name starts to catch on, the serial port will go the way of the ISA bus and be forgotten. Does it strike anybody else as odd that Microsoft considers the serial port a legacy device, but still supports the printer port?




February 22, 2008
In response to: Rename the serial port?
Alan Crawley commented:

I'm for sticking with the traditional terminology. Cheers




February 22, 2008
In response to: Rename the serial port?
Jan Maassen commented:

I prefer the oldest (more common) name. But what about use of IEEE 1394 or FireWire?




April 14, 2008
In response to: Rename the serial port?
Tony L commented:

Your editors change common usage of words in your articles, but allow the grammatical slips to pass through? For shame editor, for shame.





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