🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <326084680wnr@roborat.demon.co.uk>, Dave Scott
<dave@roborat.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article: <0t3zZAAIadSxEw5b@maclad.demon.co.uk>  Alan MacLeod 
><alan@maclad.demon.co.uk> writes:
>> 
>> A common problem, but it's only because of the way msd reports the coms 
>> ports.
>
>This reminds me of my problem several months back. After fitting a new
>16550 I/O card (COM 1&2), together with a 2ndary standard card (COM 3&4)
>I found MSD variously reporting between 2 and 4 ports fitted.
>
>DOS programs worked regardless - Windows (3.1) apps got completely 
>screwed. The only thing which stopped me returning the card as faulty
>was the fact that a cold reboot _always_ gave all 4 ports.
>
>The problem turned out to be an AMI BIOS bug. Upon a warm-reboot (i.e.
>a ctrl-alt-del) the BIOS would not recognise the 16550 ports if the 
>FIFO buffers had been left enabled (and of course a cold-reboot
>always reset the hardware and so turned them off). Hence if I ran
>any software which did not turn the buffers back off again after
>it finished, the next warm-reboot lost the port that had been used.
>
>I fix the problem by running a small utility in autoexec, which pokes 
>the port addresses (3F8, 2F8 etc) into the appropriate BIOS data area 
>(0040:0000 - 0040:0006). There are similar utilities in the SimTel 
>archive ISTR.
>
>> It has been suggested that msd software was written by someone at 
>> Microsoft in their lunch hour. I think it was written on a Friday 
>> afternoon after the programmer(?) had been down to the pub :)
>
>I prefer to think of M$ programmers as being on harder drugs than
>alcohol - probably hallucinatory in nature :)
>

I too have a funny with serial ports and MSD.
I have a Dan Technology 486SX with serial mouse on Com1, Com2 cable to
down load from a NC100 notebook and Com4 used for a Zoom 34I fax-modem
(with 16650chip).
All appears to work well BUT MSD says I have Com1, Com2 & Com3

Does anyone have any ideas?
-- 
Chris Davison                           tel/fax: (01372) 46 26 73
Technology Marketing                    
7 Littlemead                            e-mail  chris@cdavison.demon.co.uk
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