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Comment by dpfu | Hacker News Reader

I recently got my parents a fanless desktop computer. There a lot of options, but I went with a cheap Shuttle XPC slim barebone [1]: It is tiny, has a really nice industrial design and two front facing COM ports (!).

[1] http://www.shuttle.eu/fileadmin/resources/download/docs/spec...

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I remember looking at this one. Be careful, though : no bluetooth, probably because it was meant for point-of-sale / other Retail industry use cases.

Yes, I noticed that to. I just ended up going for a cheap ~6 Euro USB adapter. On the plus side you get an SD card reader. (And besides Bluethooth it has great connectivity: 2x LAN + WLAN with external antennas.)

two front facing COM ports

They'll come in handy!

But seriously, what's the motivation behind putting those on the machine, or wanting them?

From the datasheet:

"Two serial ports: Many PCs do not have these legacy ports any longer, since they have been superseded and replaced by USB for most consumer applications, but they are still commonly used for applications such as industrial automation systems, scientific analysis, POS systems and other such fields of application."

I imagine that's for use with POS terminals (ie cash registers). A lot of those still have serial-port barcode scanners or serial-port printers.

I'm pretty sure the ports are also commonly used for cash drawers.

They're nice for kernel debugging. Also it's nice to be able to headlessly control a machine without ssh & the entire network stack.

These are meant to be industrial computers. To be used for things such as being the brains of an automation system.

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