Re: Mini ITX / Serial Ports

["Patrick Lidstone" <patrick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Ali Watkins" <ukha@a...> wrote:
> Chaps!
> (Congrats on a successful UKHA2004, the web cams were enjoyable at
> times!)
>
> I've had an mini-ITX board for a while running Gentoo Linux offering
> Apache, xAP and x10 for the home network, but I've got a swipe card
> reader and a serial IR emitter I'd like to connect up to the box,
which
> nestles snuggle under the sofa in my lounge connecting to the
network
> over WiFi.
>
> Does anyone have experience with the ITX riser card that would
allow me
> to add 2 extra serial ports, as well as having a port free for video
> capture? Does anyone know how easy it is to get one of these serial
> expansion boards running under Linux? Or maybe I'm missing an
obvious
> better way of doing it?  The card I've seen also come with an extra
> parallel port which I thought I could use to connect some switches
and
> buttons to the box too.
>
> I saw someone posted such a PCI RS232 on special the other day, did
> anyone buy one who runs linux?

I have the 8 port MSI card which runs fine under Linux - it forms the
core of "xAP-in-a-box" - which does caller id, temperature,
weather
station, X-10, Comfort and so on against an EPIA 5000 booting from
compact flash. The 8 port card configuration is a little fiddly -
nothing too terrible, but if you go that route, give me a shout and
I'll dig out the config details.

Patrick