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the large spikes by themselves. That's why I have added 10 ohm resistors in series
with data line before the zener diodes. This resistor limits the surge current to safer
value for zener diode. The resistor must be always be between the data line and
zener diode, so you mut plug this circuit in the way where the computer goes to the
connector on the right and the data line to the connector on the left. It is possible
to make this circuit "bidirectional" just by adding also resistors to the computer side
of the zener diodes, but this increased the resies resitance in the data line.
Ideas for improving protection circuits
For getting better protection for serial port, there are some ideas to make those
circuits more effective. The improvements are using frame gound pin (pin 1) for
common gounding pin to surge protector elements instead of using data ground pin
(pin 7). Another improvements is to add protection also to the handshaking lines.
For example B&B Electronics 232DSP surge protector uses freme gound pin 1 as the
common gounding point for surge protectors. The surge protecting elements are
26V metal oxide varistors. Varistors are installed for protecting all pins 2 through 8
and also pin 20. In this way all data and handshaking pins needed for normal RS232 asyncronous serial connection are protected.
Using those same ideas you can easily make your own RS-232 serial port protection
circuits which suit to all your needs