I have two USB->Serial cables, a Parallax and a BAFO. When I connect the BAFO to my Vista Ultimate 32bit laptop as it mounts it shows COM 13 selected and the Basic Atom IDE won’t find the Mini ABB board on a search of available COM ports. Interestingly, manually setting the port to COM 13 on the IDE can be done but the build and program are dimmed. The same happens if I remove the cable from that USB port and plug it into any of the two others, except that in those cases COM 14 and COM 15 are chosen.
When I use the Parallax USB->Serial cable, the adapter mounts as COM 3 and everything works, I can build and program the MiniABB.
I have nothing else connected to the USB ports when I run these tests, so why can one cable get the lower COM port and not the others? Is there a limit to the COM ports that the IDE can see?
I use the BAFO USB to serial port cable. I had problems with it, when I first purchased it. I later found it worked great if I plugged it into an external powered USB hub (Currently I am using one from LinkSys). It appears like my USB port on my computer was not giving the BAFO enough juice. There have been several threads on it.
Yes you can force the Comm port to be lower. Make sure the device is plugged into a USB slot and Bring up the device manager. (Control Panel -> Device Manager). Expand the area for ports (COM & LPT). Look for the one the that is labeled Prolific USB-to-Serial… (Com13). Bring up the Properties on it. Go to the Port Settings Tab. Click on Advanced. There will be a box at the end of it which allows you to choose a com port. If you expand it, it will probably show you a bunch of lower number ones that say they are in use. For me this happened as I tried several different USB cables and other such devices. If you are pretty sure of a free one, you can choose it. It will probably complain and have you verify you want to do this, Say yes, and confirm your way out of the properties for the device. I don’t remember but you may then need to reboot… Hope this works for you.
Thanks for the fast reply. Since there was a COM port I assume the cable works, but I will do the powered hub bit and see.
I’m really glad you mentioned how to go in and tweek the OS because that will certainly give me some more insight. That was a good bit of info for you to share with me.
