Did someone test mini PCI RS232 serial boards on Routerboard ?
Are they recognised by router OS ?
It could be a reliable and clean way to add serial ports, rather than using a multiport USB to serial converter, doable only on USB enabled Routerboard hardware.
There are boards available with 2 or 4 ports, between 40 - 80 $ including cables with DB9 sockets.
I’m not sure RouterOS provides driver for such card.
I think that most of those cards are based on the same PCI chipset (OXmPCI952 or the newer OXUPCI952) + 16C550 or 16C950 (better) serial chips.
http://www.plxtech.com/products/uart/oxmpci952
Moschip do have as well a PCI to RS232 chip : MCS9835. Drivers are available on their site at
http://www.moschip.com/html/download_drivers.html
For example the GW2201 from gatework.com is an octal serial mini PCI board, with 4 RS232 and 4 RS422/RS485
As PCI is progressively becoming an obsolete technology at least for normal X86 boards, prices on those boards will certainly continu to drop in the coming year.
This makes the mini PCI serial board a good deal for the embeded risc market.
Multi ports mini PCI express cards do exist as well and are not very expensive neither.
Is there any update? I want to use my RB as console server. It will be cool if it possible.