Syba SY-PEX15034 2 Port DB9 Serial PCIe 1.0 x1 Moschip Chipset

Interfaces with my serial equipment with out issue. It is sturdy and fits well into the computer. What more is there?

4 serial ports for under $30–seemed like a good deal. It wasn’t. This card gave me trouble from the minute I opened the box.

First off, the instruction sheet (which the manufacturer uses for several different products) was incomplete, confusing and even contradictory. In one place, it states that the card should be installed before installing the driver. In another, it says the exact opposite. I installed the driver first since that’s the way it’s most commonly done. However, when I launched the Setup file on the included CD, a dialog box popped up immediately saying that the drivers hadn’t been tested to work properly with Windows, might cause my system to become unstable and did I really want to go ahead and install them anyway? This gave me pause, but I went ahead and installed them, hoping for the best.

I then shut down and installed the card. Here I ran into another obstacle: there are two DB-9 connectors on the card plus another two on a separate block-off plate. These two connect to the card via ribbon cables with female Molex-type jacks. The Molex connectors are not polarized, meaning that the plugs will go together in either of two ways and there is nothing in the instructions that states which way is correct. I took a guess on the plugs, buttoned it all up and started my computer. The New Hardware Wizard helpfully told me that it had found something new, meaning the drivers had failed to load. I tried reinstalling the drivers without success. I downloaded and installed the latest drivers from Moschip’s Web site–which, by the way, is flaky and miserable to navigate and requires you to give personal information before you can download a file–but had no luck with those either. After about an hour and a half, I gave up and boxed up the card for return to Amazon.

About the only good thing I can say about this product is at least the drivers didn’t seem to damage my system as far as I can tell.

Note to Mac owners: This card comes with an OS X driver but the install media is one of those half-sized disks that won’t work in the slot-loaded optical drives that are installed in most, if not all, new Macs.

This worked perfectly to add serial port functionality for phone system integration. Installation was a snap, Windows installed the driver, and it was working in a couple of minutes. Can’t ask for more than that!