On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 21:11:16 -0500, Al Klein
wrote:

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:42:00 GMT, ISH wrote:

My new computer lacks serial ports. I guess they went the way of the
floppy drive. I have a USB-Serial converter, but the Starsoft program
only works with serial?

Anybody faced this before?

To the program, a USB-serial converter *is* a serial port. I never
heard of anyone writing code that talked directly to the driver - it's
much easier to just write code that talks to the serial port and let
the driver make up the difference.

Two caveats:

1) Make sure that you have the latest driver for your converter. Some
converters work fine on older drivers - for just about every device
except scanners.

2) Look in Device Manager to see what port number Windows assigned the
converter (when the converter is connected, of course). Use that
number in the program. Also be aware that if you move the converter
to another USB port, Windows will find "a new device" and install it
to a different port number. You can manually (in Device Manager)
change the port numbers for "all" the converters on all your USB ports
to the same serial port number, so your program doesn't have to be
changed if you move the cable. (Credit Andy Porrett for that last
one.)

If you know all this, ignore the post, but someone else may benefit
from it.


Al ,
I didn't know that.......

Thanks to you, I can now program my scanner! It works!
Thank you.
Ish