This PCI bus 8-port serial board with a fan-out (octopus) cable configures 8 COM ports on the faster PCI bus at data rates up to 115.2 kbps. It is an extremely dependable communication solution for ISPs or any type of RAS system that does not deal with an overwhelming amount of traffic. Each port includes integrated 16-byte FIFO buffer with software-configurable Tx/Rx triggers.

All eight ports share one PCI bus IRQ even when accessed simultaneously and thus saves valuable resources for other expansion cards. The first four serial ports have all of the standard serial signals while the the last four serial ports do not include the Ring Indicator (RI) input. With easy plug-and-play installation the Lava Octopus-550 automatically selects the next available IRQ and COM address; just plug it in and go!