Cheap serial-to-USB adapters are invaluable for snooping debug ports or programming chips, and if you ask us, you can never have too many laying around the bench.

Claimed as easy to use, the E5805A USB-to-RS232 interface can connect up to four RS232 test instruments to the USB port on a personal computer at baud rates up to 230 Kb/s per serial port.

And if you were to go back a few more years into the past, you’d have found when you bought a mouse with a PS/2 connector fitted, it may well have come with an adapter for a 9-pin RS232 serial port.