Quatech USB Serial Adapters

Introduction

Technology advances and the trend towards closed box systems are significantly impacting port expansion options. In some cases the USB port is the only choice, which can be a problem if your network relies on serial devices. Quatech has the solution.

Industry-leading features include fastest speeds Quatech's USB Serial Adapters are based on the idea that taking advantage of new technology should not necessitate abandoning legacy devices and the applications written for them.

Features like industry-leading speed, plug-and-play and surge suppression make Quatech USB Serial Adapters the ideal solution for a wide variety of industries such as banking, retail and industrial automation where PCs have significantly shorter lifecycles than the peripherals used with them.

Quatech USB Serial Adapters enumerate themselves as standard COM ports that are compatible with all standard RS-232 or RS-422/485 devices and the software created for them. The adapters also have a unique industrial surge suppression feature. This "IND" option is ideal for implementing USB-to-serial networks in factories, power plants, and other potentially harsh industrial environments.

Embedded USB Serial Adapters for custom enclosures

If you're looking to seamlessly connect multiple serial peripherals via a single USB port in a custom enclosure, try Quatech's Embedded USB Serial Adapters. These reliable units use the same technology as our standard products and enable manufacturers and integrators to easily incorporate multiple serial interface devices such as keypads, displays, card readers, and printers into custom enclosures that lack native serial support without changing software written for serial port communications.

Available with 4 or 8 independent ports, the small-footprint boards have built-in surge suppression at each serial port,necessary for maximum reliability and robustness. Mounting holes allow easy installation into cabinets and kiosks. For maximum flexibility, each port on 200/300 models can be configured as RS-422 or RS-485 in any combination, meaning a single adapter can be used to implement multiple full-duplex and half duplex multi-drop networks.

USB Serial Adapters vs. USB Serial Cables

All USB to serial converters are not the same. There are a number of inexpensive cables on the market that perform USB to RS-232 serial conversion. While these may seem like an economical choice, they are often poor choices for all but the simplest of applications. Many customers who purchase Quatech USB to serial adapters do so after unsuccessful attempts to use these RS-232 converter cables. The reason these cables fail are varied but the most common is that they lack the advanced functionality built into the Quatech adapters.

For example. most adapter cables have very small data buffers and no IRQ support. Quatech USB to serial adapters use 16550 UARTs with 16-byte FIFOs for each port. This means that applications at very high data rates are easily handled in heavy multitasking environments. In addition, Quatech provides sophisticated drivers for its adapters that enable extensive system configuration options from setting data rates and controlling clocking to setting parity bits and flow control. With these options available, even the most sophisticated application software can address RS-232 serial ports enabled by Quatech adapters exactly as they would a standard COM port.

QSU-100
USB Serial Adapter, 4 port RS-232

HSU-100
USB Serial Adapter, 16 port RS-232