Serial Port Recognition

[woodrufj]

I have a new lap top that came with no serial ports. I have some USB
to Serial adaptor cables that are pretty slick (not NI hardware). The computer recognizes the serial ports as COM5 or COM6, but labView and MAX aren't finding them.

I used the same adapter cables on my wife's laptop that did have a
built in serial port, and both LabView and MAX picked those up with no
problems.

Any ideas?

Jay W
505/287 Dakota

[LuI]

Does the device control manager (system control panel/system/hardware) recognize those serial ports?
Do they need some extra drivers or configuration?
Sometimes those serial emulators are a bit too tricky for MAX to be recognised.
If you are sure a, say, Com5, exists, you may as well wire a string constant with 'Com5' to the VISA ressource name and try that one out.

Just my Euro 0.02!
Greetings from Germany!<br>-- <br>Uwe

[JoshuaP]

Can you give us the brand and make of those converters.

Thanks,
Josh

[woodrufj]

>>>Does the device control manager (system control panel/system/hardware) recognize those serial ports?

Yes.

>>>Do they need some extra drivers or configuration?

I installed a drvier off the CD, the computer didn't recognize a 'serial' port until the driver was in.

>>>Sometimes those serial emulators are a bit too tricky for MAX to be recognised.

But the exact same set up worked perfectly on my wife's laptop.  The only difference I see is she has to built in 'com' ports, I have none.  But when I plugged the USB-serial cable in, the extra com ports showed up on her computer (and still does, I tried it again this morning).  On my computer it doesn't show 'Ports' under devices in MAX (but it does in device manager).  So I'm going to try re-installing MAX with the USB-serial cable plugged in.

>>>If you are sure a, say, Com5, exists, you may as well wire a string constant with 'Com5' to the VISA ressource name and try that one out.

I'll try this first.  The pull down device selection didn't let me choose anything (nothing to to choose from).

>>>Can you give us the brand and make of those converters.

"Sewell", they're cheap, but they came higher quality than I expected.  If it didn't work on the previous computer I'd blame the cable, but I think its a problem with my computer or a little bug in the softwear.

Here's a link to the site, but I don't think you'll learn much.

http://sewelldirect.com/usbtoserial.asp

thanks for the help guys.

Jay W

505/287 Dakota

[JoshuaP]

Do you have NI-VISA installed? You need the full development version, the run-time will not show them.

-Josh