16 thoughts on “PCMCIA Modem Serial Port

  1. Man, this hack is ANCIENT… I remember reading this when I was back in highschool.

    Good hack though, just a bit dated. (You can get USB->Serial ports now, for cheaper than $20.)

  2. Neat little hack, but his excuse that pcmcia serial adaptors are hard to find or expensive just makes me laugh. He suggests a cheap 20 dollar 14.4 modem for this project, but you can buy pcmcia serial adaptors all day long for 10-20 dollars on ebay or other discount sites.

    Some things you do for fun/experimentation and some you do out of necessity. Be honest with yourself and admit you just wanna tinker.. its okay! :)

  3. @1: When a PCMCIA modem is plugged in, Windows maps it to a COM port to allow windows programs to communicate with it. Windows simply assumes theres a modem connected to that com port, but you can still use it for whatever you want.

    I had actually wondered it this was possible.. and now I know it is! my particular model (14.4 as well) has an x-jack, so i could remove that and fit the chip there instead. this is really neat, too bad theres not more info tho :(

  4. In response andrew, it would seem that the modem is simply detected through the serial interface on the pcmcia card. And just because you can buy a solution does not mean it was either fun or informative to build your own. Seems if nothing else the author will gain a better understanding of how the device works. That is something you simply cannot put a price on.

  5. i did this mod once, kinda hard to folow the directions and pictures.
    i had to get the datasheet
    For the chip and “start over”
    but it works.

    i made a FULL Rs232 Mod

    Regarding the cheap 20$ modem.
    this is a couple of years old like 1999 or 2000
    where serial cards where harder to come by!
    (specialty hardware like)

    if anybody wants the details, they can send me an email

    kyQWERTYndal.dk@gmail.com
    Remove the capital letters!

    /Kyndal

  6. While you can get usb to rs232 adaptors really cheap, there are heaps of things that still dont work reliably/at all, or go really slow on them since you dont have real access to the handshaking lines, so this hack still has value.

  7. I just found an old (1998) Compaq modem (free) — It is USB connected & USB BUS powered. One of my laptops doesn’t have a serial port, and I didn’t want to spend any money on a USB / Serial dongle. I especially did not like the ones CompUSA has — they require you to plug the USB/Ser adapter into an AC adapter *Boggles*.

    I might try this hack, so that I can use my crappy portless laptop on router configs :) .

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