This was effectively the ultimate point of host bused serial line concentrators. The serial control hardware and intelligence have been moved into the breakout box, leaving just the bus interface hardware in the pc expansion slot; and more ports can to added by slotting additional breakout boxes together without needing further expansion shots in the pc case.

Lets take a detailed look at the card and cables (separate cables for data and power, taken from a hard disk power supply)

And now we will take a few views of thebreakout box exterior…

And finally, the inside components of the break out box.

( to be done)