Advantech PCI-1612B

came across a few Advantech PCI-1612B cards - What are the most common practical application?

Can their for instance be used with LinuxCNC?

Looking up the data sheet for it. It appears to be a 4 port serial port card. It could be used for connecting serial devices. But those connections likely will not be real time capable. Mot common usage might be controlling a VFD via Modbus interface. This is assuming the available drivers for it are compatible with Linuxcnc.

It doesn't appear to be particularly useful for Linuxcnc.

Thanks, again Andy for writing that PCL-720 driver for me. We are still using it, but only for GPIO, the step generation has been handed off to a Mesa 5i25.

Advantech does make lots of interesting and potentially useful looking stuff that could possibly be pressed into service for Linuxcnc, DAC cards, Encoder counters, digital I/O,... but a serial card on the surface doesn't seem to have a lot of potential.