Serial Connector - Dell PowerEdge 6850 System Installation Manual

Back to Contents Page
I/O Connectors
Dell™ PowerEdge™ 6850 Systems Installation and Troubleshooting Guide
Serial Connector
Video Connector
USB Connectors
Integrated NIC Connectors
Network Cable Requirements
I/O connectors are the gateways that the system uses to communicate with external devices, such as a keyboard, mouse, printer, or monitor. This section
describes the various connectors on your system. If you reconfigure the hardware connected to the system, you may also need the pin number and signal
information for these connectors.
Figure B-1. I/O Connectors
Table B-1 shows the icons used to label the connectors on the system.
Table B-1. I/O Connector Icons
Icon Connector

Serial connector

Video connector
USB connector
NIC connector
Serial Connector
Serial connectors support devices such as external modems, printers, and mice that require serial data transmission. The serial connector is also used by the
BMC to provide remote access to the system. The serial connector uses a 9-pin D-subminiature connector.
Serial Connector Autoconfiguration
The default designation of the integrated serial connector is COM1. When you add an expansion card containing a serial connector that has the same
designation as the integrated connector, the system's autoconfiguration feature remaps (reassigns) the integrated serial connector to the next available
designation. Both the new and the remapped COM connectors share the same IRQ setting. COM1 and COM3 share IRQ4, while COM2 and COM4 share IRQ3.
NOTE: If two COM connectors share an IRQ setting, you may not be able to use them both at the same time. In addition, if you install one or more
expansion cards with serial connectors designated as COM1 and COM3, the integrated serial connector is disabled.
Before adding a card that remaps the COM connectors, check the documentation that came with the software to make sure that the software can
accommodate the new COM connector designation.
Figure B-2 illustrates the pin numbers for the serial connector and
Figure B-2. Serial Connector Pin Numbers
Figure B-1 illustrates the connectors on the system.
Table B-2 defines the pin assignments for the connector.