National Instruments AT-232/2 Serial Interface Card

The AT-232/2 is a commonly used 2-port Serial Interface Card. The manufacturer of the AT-232/2 is National Instruments. The part number of the NI AT-232/2 is 777312-02.

A computer can be connected to multiple devices, either stand-alone or modular through three different interfaces which are: serial GPIB and Ethernet. The AT-232/2 allows the bit-by-bit transfer of data and connects the computer to other devices like modems, various peripherals and terminals. Faster and more reliable serial interface cards are being developed by National Instruments for more efficient and error-free communication between the devices. These are compatible with windows operating systems and are available in different configurations.

The AT-232/2 contains two ports. Each of these ports connects the Data Communication Equipment DCE or host equipment to Data Terminal Equipment DTE through D-sub Connector (DB9). Two male D-sub connectors can be attached to each AT-232/2 card. Thus, it requires a female D-sub cable to connect to the other device. The operating systems compatible with the AT-232/2 Windows 9x/ME/XP/200/NT. The AT-232/2 card runs on the RS-232 interface. It includes Ready to Send/Clear to Send RTS/CTS hardware handshake (HH) lines to ensure error-free decoding at receiver's end. The AT-232/2 can be turned-on via USB, so it doesn't need any external power source. The serial interface card provides RS-232 port (full-duplex) to the computer enabling bi-directional data transport. The bus that connects the AT-232/2 card is ISA bus. The FIFO size/depth of the AT-232/2 is 16 B, implying 16 B of data is required to buffer. The AT-232/2 has a high data rate of 115.2 kbps.