Post by thread:Watching serial port I/O

An Australian company that sells scientific equipment has a free serial communications program for controlling electronic balances and saving the output from the balance. But it works just fine as a comms viewer. The software expects a cross over cable with the normal inversions (if the remote instrument doesn't invert connections internally) - Tx/Rx DSR/DTR CTS/RTS. The configuration section allows all of the common communications parameters to be selected. Balance commands are selected from a pick list and transmitted when the command button is pressed. All incoming ascii text is held in a view window and may be saved as a simple text file. The comms setup is stored as a simple text file. So is the command pick list. So what's the down side ? You have to put up with the company name on the main windows. You have to edit the command pick list to suit your purposes (although you can type directly into the command window the commands are not automatically added to the command file). You have to remember to save the transaction file at the end of a session. You need to down load a clunky, self extracting 1.8MB file. Where do you get it ? http://www.andmercury.com.au/Freebies.htm <http://www.andmercury.com.au/Freebies.htm> Almost, but not quite - the down load link hasn't been activated on this page 8^{ But the description link is active, and near the end of the description (just above the System Requirements box) is the *down load link*. When you have the file just run it. For some strange reason it will create 3 sub directories under C:\windows\temp You'll end up with - C:\windows\temp\transfer\disk1 (1.14MB) and C:\windows\temp\transfer\disk2 (0.74MB) Run setup from disk1 and you will get a proper install program. To use it just plug in the cable and start the program up. Set the comms parameters from the pick lists, select what info to record along with the comms data being sent/received and click the start button. To transmit - select a command from the pick list and click the command button. You can type a non standard command (character) into the command pick list window. To receive - just watch the big window at the bottom. I tested the program by plugging a cross over serial cable into 2 serial ports on the one machine, starting 2 copies of the program, one monitoring each serial port. When I clicked start on both copies of the program I had full 2 way communication with data logging. This is the cross over cable I used - CD 1 ------ 4 DTR RX 2 ------ 3 TX TX 3 ------ 2 RX DTR 4 ------ 1 CD Gnd 5 ------ 5 Gnd RTS 7 ------ 8 CTS CTS 8 ------ 7 RTS RI 9 ------ 9 RI DSR 6 jumped to 1 CD at each end of the cable As usual, no guarantees, but it does it for me. Bye.