Suggestion about Uart3 serial port design

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1

Dear Beagleboard Devs:
I hope next beagleboard hardware could connect to usb2uart serial port.
One problem I encounter yesterday is that the SN65C3221EPW (U10) is demaged,and the computer
can’t connect to the board via RS232 port. And I solved by remove the U10 chip, directly connect to
and prolific usb2serial converter. This device has been well supportedin linux, and you can find the pl2303 driver is
already in liux kernel.
The RS232 port is quite old industry standard, most morden computer didn’t provide that,
this including my laptop computer. So, It’s really inconvenient to develop with my laptop.
I hope, next release BB could provide the developer one more choice. Say, we can bring out
the the 3.3v serial port, which is the pin 8, 9 of TXS010 U9. And we can keep the SN65,
use jumper to swith these options, so the computer which has old RS232 port will still works.
Thanks.

Dennis.lan

2

The next revsion C2 will not connect UART2. The board has already been released and is in prodution. The early boards had a diferent package on the level shifters that failed evry now and then,. On the Rev B6 and later boards that was replaced with a different package. We have not seen any failures of that device sense the change. So, the design remaoins as currently designed.

Gerald