Hell is it with Trackers lately? Sequencers FTW, trackers are for losers! --- Says he who can't figure out how they work 😉
The port replicator for my 8540W still has COM and LPT. HP also state, officially, that the laptop will run Free DOS and will sell you it with this OS, which would make me think it must be possible to use the replicator in that OS if you had to run something that was really old.
Sucks that you'd need a replicator though, everything should have those ports on the back. I also miss the PS/2 ports from things, oftentimes I find USB keyboards and Mice can have noticeable latency, especially if the system's CPU is under very heavy load.
I think I once before told the story of how, where I worked, the other techie bought a new laptop and tried rubbing it in my face about his flashy P4. A large part of what we did consisted of setting up Routers/Switches/Equipment via RS232, composing documents, updating the firmware on the networked equipment and maintaining some rather old computers - a lot of which did not have CD-ROM drives. He sure looked like a fool when he needed an adapter for everything and still ended up being slower because of HAL. My Zenith 286 sure looked good while that was going on.
Edit: Can't resist, because I still laugh myself half to death remembering it - Lowest system you tried for everyday main PC
The SlimsPort 286 laptop which I used to take into work with me and get laughed at by the chief tech guy with his flashy P4... Joke was on him, all we used them for was word processing, some database stuff and network admin/debugging via Telnet or RS-232 at which the 286 was actually faster because I wasn't behind HAL, I also had a floppy drive whereas he had to lump a USB one around. It was fun beating his 2.8GHz with 1.5GB RAM, ATI Radeon Video monster with a measly 16MHz 286 and only 1MB of RAM, also constantly reminded him I was using less electricity and often asked if he was on fire yet.