THanks Z, but I'm still not clear about his. I know what sort f slots my machine has, but i don't know what a control card is. Is it the card with the serial ports on the end? I need to know where to look in my machine for the manufacturer id for the jumper settings to see if my com2 has been disabled. I ran the conflict test, it didn't find any. the mouse is plugged into the 9 pin serial port (com 1) and is on irq 4. If i put the modem in this port it works fine, but i have no mouse when online. I would also appreciate it if someone could suggest ways of coping without a mouse when online. In explorer 3 I can't tab through the page, it only swaps between the address bar and the toolbar. So i use explorer 4, which doesn't load up full screen. I can't get at the left hand corner box to choose maximise - aly just toggles between the toolbar and the document. Is there a shortcut key to maximise a window?

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Hi Dave: Here's a pic of a control board that plugs into a slot (don't know if it's ISA or PCI) to show you the ports & that there are dip switches to be set for different IRQ, or disable of a port. I think later motherboards for 486 PCs did have control board built in like todays motherboards (as shown in socket 7 pic). Your modem seams to be fine, but maybe try switching the com port connectors around. maybe you have a bad cable from control board to serial socket since your serial mouse worked. Also you need to make sure that the non-working port was not set to disable in dip switch settings. Good luck. Z

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Thanks Z, I will check the jumper settings tonight. I have taken out the card, given it a wipe, blown in the slot and put it back in, but i don't have any Isoproply Alcohol to clean it with - would lighter fluid do? I can't swap the cables over because the two serial ports are at the end of the card (where the games and printer ports are in the above picture) and the game and printer ports are where the serial port sockets are in your pic. Any suggestions? Also, I have received the following replys about some serial/multi IO cards for sale, do any of them seem suitable?: ********************* 1. I don't know which ports the card possesses and I can't tet it either as the machine it came from is completely dismantled now! To be honest, when I opened up the computer, I didn't even know what this thing was! (I'm not very technically minded). I can describe the ports a little better if this helps though! It has two ports actually on the end of the card with the larger of the two just holes to plug a socket into (25 holes in all) and the smaller one has 9 pins. Then there is another port thingy which is connected to the card via cables and would be above the other ports as you look at the back of the machine. This has an identiacal sized larger port to the one below but it is the pins. Then there is a smaller port (but larger than the one below) which is holes and has 15 holes. The things soldered onto the board say "winbond" and there is one metal thing on the card which says 24.000 MHZ so i presume that is the speed? I believe the model number is P/N GSL069446586. ******************* 2. This card has 3 chips on it, none of which are marked with UART. They only have the following:-GS9351/GD75232 on 2 of Them, and GSA9403/GD74LS25 on the 3rd. I believe the UART is integrated into these chips,which may also control the parallel port, games port, floppy & hard disk drives.There is also One Main Chip in Middle of card Marked, Goldstar Prime 2C 9418. Hope this is of some use. By the way, I have 2 of these (Identical)" ***************** Thanks very much for your time, guys, you're being a load of help. Let me know if I'm annoying you too much. Dave

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Hi Dave: Don't use lighter fluid, if you have some rubbing alcohol us that instead. As for the serial port cables, on the older PCs I have seen there were ribbon cables from the socket to a plug which attaches to control board. What I wanted you to try is to just switch the plugs that connect to board to see if the problem was not a bad cable/plug, but if you serial plug are soldered to curcuit board nothing you can do. There were many cheap control boards made that have no imformation other that a piece of paper that came with them with the switch setting on it. If the cable is bad then you should be able to un-screw it from mounting bracket (hex socket nut) & replace it with another cable. Be carefull to make sure you ground yourself to remove stactic from your body, or you could damage PC parts. One last thing is if your PC has a PS2 mouse port use it & use working serial port for modem. I don't like to buy used controler board except of it's been tested (unless you just want cables). You still can buy new controler cards, but do you really want to spend any money on old 486 PC. Good luck. Z

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