Gunnar 601 Change of Serial Port

[Ian Goodman]

Around three weeks ago we had a rather severe electrical storm which left the only serial port in my my CMC PC useless.
So disabled this port in bios and purchased a two port PCI to serial card.
After loading the drivers for this card the software said thet the new ports are 3 & 4 as 1& 2 are in use.
The spt32 software only works on Serial port 1 or 2 and I have been trying to find out how to make the spt32 software work on serial port 3 or 4 without any success.
Has any Gunnar CMC#601 owner had the same problem?
If so how did you overcome this problem?

I would appreciate any help.

 

[Est-I-Mate]

Some serial cards allow you to set the port numbers by changing jumpers, others have a software "port redirect" utility.

But somehow it should be possible to configure your card to give you access to ports 1 or 2.

What serial card are you using?

 

[Mike Labbe]

You may want to try assigning the broken port to a higher port and let it redect. Then go into windows and zap the old com1 and com2 from the configuration. Then go back into bios and disable it again.

Then the new one may work on com1 or com2

Keep in mind that Com1 and Com3 both share IRQ4. Com2 and Com4 both share IRQ3. Because of this, you should never use com3 if there's a com1, or com4 if theres a com2. They will usually conflict.

I don't have this brand of CMC, but hopefully this makes sense as something you can try. (move the existing modems and the malfunctioning port up higher to a port above 4, zap what you have listed in device manager, and then add the external card again to be assigned as com2 or com1.)

Computers no longer ship with floppy drives, parallel ports, or serial/com ports. Hopefully they also offer a USB flavor/solution. Another option would be a usb to serial conversion device. They run about $30 or so, and are generally reliable. I use one with my laptop (Keyspan) to program alarm panels and phone systems.

Mike

 

[jasonl]

Gunnar 601 Serial issues

Mike gives some great advice. Gunnar, sadly, does not have an option for USB at this point. We tried to use a USB/Serial adapter and could only get intermittent success. Changing the serial port to com1 or com2 is your only option that works reliably. We have done this with a couple of computers we have used with the 601. We buy cheap Dell's that don't come with a serial card so we have to add one every time we switch out a computer.

I hope you get it going. It is a great machine when it is working!

Jason

 

[Ian Goodman]

Hi
I wish to thank you for your information.

The software with the serial port was used to reallocate the two existing ports to 21 & 22 and then Serial ports 3 & 4 to 1 & 2 even though the warning was that these two ports were in use and not to do it.
However you can be a little bit blind sometimes and I dis this anyway.

Reboot the machine and bingo the two new ports were 1 & 2.

Before connecting to CMC I checked the workings with a Sharp Organiser
and it ID'd the organiser on both ports, so onto the CMC and it now works fine.

So I wish thank you for your help with this much appreciated.

 

[Mike Labbe]

It was a pleasure, Ian. I love happy endings.

Best regards
Mike

 

[DLB]

USB adapter DOES work.

I tried all the steps you guys said in the above posts, and unfortunately, none of them worked. Either it was a problem with the card for the serial adapter I added or Vista, or a combination. Whatever it was, I couldn't get the darn thing to work using the serial connection. So.....I tried a USB to Serial adapter, and it works like a charm. I don't if anyone has tried this, but I bought it at Best Buy. It was about $37. Made by Dynex. It was in the section with all the networking cables and such. So if you ever have problems, give it a whirl. Now one thing to note though is that I'm using a Gunnar F1 XL. So that might make a difference.

Happy trails.

dave.