I seem to have a dead com2 port. I have tried to check ifit is disabled in the bios, but i can't find any reference to com ports in the bios. How can i check this? If it is the port itself which is no good, and i buy a new serial card, how easy is it to set up?

If there is no reference to your serial port in the BIOS setup, it might be disabled via a jumper setting on the motherboard. Open up the computer and see if there is any kind of labeling (usually silkscreened) on the motherboard explaining the jumpers. If you just find a serial port card-not a multi I/O-the setup should be fairly easy. If you can't figure out how to disable com 2 on the motherboard you may be able to set up the new serial port as COM 3 and use a spare IRQ. I am guessing that there won't be any software involved but I could be wrong. The last time I bought a new serial card for a work computer, using NT, it required software but most older serial / I/O cards are hardware driven. So as long as you set it up with a free COM port, IRQ and I/O address, DOS/Win 3.1 should recognize the new port when you boot up.