[Dxbase] COM Port Sharing

Sun Sep 25 10:18:50 EDT 2005

Last night I wanted to double check, again, what Jack was talking about
concerning sharing COM ports and IRQs. This is what I found. I have XP Pro
for those wondering. If you go into All Programs\Accessories\System
Tools\System Information you find a tab that lists Conflicts/Sharing under
Hardware Resources. There it lists different things that share IRQs and
other Resources. COM1 is not listed as sharing anything, this is the one to
my Mark V. The NetMos Multi/IO card is sharing IRQ 17 with the audio
device, but when you go to the Device Manager to change one of them you find
that 1) Both items say "No Conflicts" and 2) It won't allow you to change it
even if you wanted too.

One other thing I just did is I have three (3) programs that use the COM
ports (Hamsoft, OneTouch, and DXBase). Hamsoft has always used COM7 for PTT
control, and the rig control it is set to 'None'. OneTouch uses COM5 to
talk to my wife's blood sugar meter. DXBase uses COM1 for the Yaesu and
COM3 to the Kenwood. My modem uses COM4. Anyway I have had all three of
these programs for at least 2 years with no problems between them. I just
now started all three programs and went to the conflict tab mentioned above,
and saw no difference. So I don't think they are butting heads mostly
because the way they are set now is the way they have been set for at least
2 years.

So do not think COM/IRQ sharing is a problem. If I could find 10 ft serial
cables I would replace both of them although they haven't been messed with
since they were installed. Not saying they didn't break a connection by
some gremlin just seems odd it would happen to two different cables going to
two different radios and two different COM ports. If you know a way how I
can test the COM ports to see that they are working both directions I would
like to know. I'm just hope to have this fixed by the end of Oct when the
CQ WW SSB contest starts. Thank goodness I'm not into working contests hot
and heavy because I would be getting more nervous about this than I already
am.

I tried this before the reformat, but have not tried it since, but going to
shortly, I am going to try every combination of the DTR, RTS and CTS
available and see if that works now. With my Kenwood I found the CTS
blocked it totally when turned on. I have one last question before I start
this. In the Device Manager do you set the Port Settings there also, or
just in User Options?

Bob