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Question about serial ports

I bought a Royal postal scale that downloads the current postal rates from the internet. The scale is connected to the pc with a RS232 Serial Cable. When I attempt to download the current postal rate from my pc to the scale; I get a message that the download failed.

My OS is Windows NT 4.0. Serial Port 1 is set to Com 1 & Serial Port 2 is set to Com 2. My modem is set to Com 3. In the setup software for the download; I am supposed to choose the com port that the serial cable is connected to. I've tried Com 1 & 2 and I get the same message.

I went into the bios to see if the serial ports were enabled.

They were set to Auto. Tried to download on these settings first. Would not work. I then changed serial port 1 to Com 1, etc.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?

magarity

First, does the program's specifications say it works with WinNT?

rid

A modem on com3 suggests an internal modem. Are you certain that the com1 and com2 are enabled in the BIOS? Sometimes internal modems throw tantrums if they cannot get whatever I/O and IRQ they want - and these may be occupied by something else, like onboard com ports. It may be worth checking out.

Regards
/RID

rid

Sorry for being blind or something, ugh.

:-\
/RID

rid

A serial cable... did it come with the scale?
/RID

magarity

"a Royal postal scale"

I wonder if Royal is the brand name or are you in England?

Miked062998

ASKER

The software does work with Windows NT. It is an internal modem on Com 3 and it is working fine. The serial cable did come with the scale and "Royal" is the brand name.

xema

I will only try com2 as com 1 and 3 will share the same IRQ, Have you check the settings on the ports, baud rate, pariety, stop bits?

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magarity

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Miked062998

ASKER

Thanks for your help. Could not get it to work on that pc.
Tried another pc and it worked fine.

Thanks again

Mike

twoodall84

Software Issues -
I'm assuming the download from the web to your pc worked without any problems and you saved some file to a local drive. If so, what software are you using to tranfer the downloaded file to the scale? Does it have settings which specify COM port (or IRQ and port), baud, parity, stop bits, flow conrtol?

Hardware Issues -
Do you have to do something special to the scale to let it know it will be receiving data?

Stay away from COM 1 as it normally defaults to the same IRQ as COM3. If possible, verify on bootup that COM2 is using IRQ 3 and port 2F8. If it doesn't or your unsure, try forcing it to these settings in BIOS. Do you have an external modem to test COM2 with? If you haven't used the port before, this would be helpful.

Also is there any other hardware (such as a network card) in your PC that might interfere with the port resources?