Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions everybody but I've already rounded
up the usual suspects. I know that XP doesn't allow bit banging
of the ports but it should be able to handle calls to them from
applications in the usual way. If the COM port was not set up in
the BIOS I wouldn't be able to start it via 'Device Manager', so
this must be an issue between XP Home (SP2) and my machine.

Before I do something desperate like reloading the OS, I'm
looking for a quick and dirty way to cycle the hardware. It only
takes a few moments to do this from the keyboard but something
like a macro would be nice.


Thanks again - Joe G3LLV