There are two stages, one which converts RS-232 to TTL, and the other converts TTL to USB. [André] removed the RS-232 chip and patched his own board (shown on the left) into its TTL lines.

You need a Swiss Army knife of serial communications? Ollie is a compact isolated USB adaptor that provides USB, CAN bus, and two UARTs at logic, RS-232, and RS-485 signaling levels, as well as an ...

Then there’s Ethernet and USB and other higher-speed serial interfaces like FireWire, HDMI, and Thunderbolt. Two of the oldest interfaces are RS-232 and RS-485.