I'm trying to drive a 15 year old pen plotter with my Win2K laptop. I've got an issue with my COM ports. Something is holding on to COM1. A friend advised using COM2, but I don't have a COM2. Only COM1 and COM4. I can't add another COM port.
Thinking the driver for the built in modem was holding on to COM1, I deleted the modem driver, and now the COM port is running amok and the system won't hibernate. Error when attempting hibernation: "The device driver for the 'Communication Port (COM1)' device is preventing the machine from entering standby. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update this driver."
Previously, the system hibernated on demand.
Entering this string: MODE COM1:9600,N,8,1,P
into a DOS prompt yields the response: "Status for device COM1:" with the settings on the next dozen or so lines. I saw this for the first time on my most recent attempt to plot a drawing.
I only recieved this after deleting the modem driver and setting my plotter driver to use LPT1 (normally set to COM1).
Entering the string: ECHO IN;SP1;PA0,0;PD1000,1000;SP0;PG;>COM1
yiels the result:
"The system cannon write to the specified device." It's supposed to draw a diagonal line.
There may be a wiring issue here. I have the pinout for the serial cable, and it's not a straight pass through cable. This pinout, and the above modem strings were taken from a very deep link at hp.com.
Note: The laptop was born with Win98SE, an I upgrade to Win2KPro shortly after I recieved it. I've been told never upgrade, but I did an haven't any problems 'til now.
Laptop: Dell Inspiron 7500 600MHz PentiumIII with 12GB HD and 128MB RAM running Win2K Pro v5.00.2195 SP1.
Thanks in advance!
* john *
