Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!trantor.harris-atd.com!trantor!dsampson From: dsampson@x102a.harris-atd.com (sampson david 58163) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Windows Terminal COM port problems Message-ID: Date: 25 Oct 90 16:03:35 GMT References: <407@nwnexus.WA.COM> Sender: news@trantor.harris-atd.com Distribution: comp Organization: Harris Gov't Aerospace Systems Division Lines: 67 In-reply-to: kelpie@nwnexus.WA.COM's message of 24 Oct 90 05:58:17 GMT In article <407@nwnexus.WA.COM> kelpie@nwnexus.WA.COM (Anthony C. Garland) writes: (This is the problem where you try to use Terminal to connect to your modem on a COM port (in my case COM4) only to be told that all COM ports are in use and that they must first be freed.) I've messed around with just about every COM-related entry in the *.ini files to no avail. According to the MS technical support people, when windows 3.0 tries to communicate through a com port it does so through the system BIOS. Programs like Procomm Plus avoid the bios and go straight for the port address and IRQ defined for the I/O you've configured. If your bios doesn't support com3 or com4, you can try a temporary solution (not guaranteed) or you can dog your PC manuafacturer for an updated bios. Here's how to test to see if your bios recognizes com3 or com4: 1) On the command line, type debug 2) When you get the - prompt, type d40:0 This displays the memory contents at that location. The 1st row is important. You'll see some sort of divider that divides the row into a left and right half. The left hand side contains the COM port addresses; the right hand side has the printer LPT addresses. 3) The address for COM 1 is F803, but you'll see it displayed in the Intel "reverse" notation as 03 F8 4) If you see 03 F8 02 F8 00 00 00 00, then your bios doesn't recoginize com3 and com4 (it has zeros for its addresses). 5) The temp solution (not guaranteed) is to use debug to poke the com3 & 4 addresses into that location. See the new issue of PC Mag V9 num 19. One of the help columns in the back talks about this. dfs -- I I n ------------------------ I I n ------------------------ I I n ------------------------ I I n ------------------------ It takes alot of patience to train a turtle. / I I n ------------------------ David Sampson Harris Corporation dsampson@x102a.ess.harris.com Gov't Aerospace Systems Divison uunet!x102a!dsampson Melbourne, Florida -------------------------------------------------------------------------------