serial port problems

[J. Landman Gay]

On 11/7/10 9:18 AM, Larry Walker wrote:
> I am trying to read data from a "serial port" (using a USB-serial adaptor).

Glad to see this here Larry. Just to fill everyone in, Larry and I have 
been going around with this issue for about a week in the tech queue 
without success (and I really appreciate his patience, he's been 
incredibly reasonable about it.) I asked Mark Waddingham about the 
problem and he said that basically the serial commands haven't been 
changed since their initial implementation back in MetaCard, and that 
any device that represents itself as a serial device should work with 
"open file" (but not necessarily with the device name returned by the 
drivernames. Use "modem:" or "printer:" instead.) He also said that they 
have never been reworked to support OS X; they were originally written 
for OS 9 and have always continued to work in OS X, so the code hasn't 
been examined.

Eric's comment that it works in 4.0 and not in 4.5 is something I don't 
think the team knows about. Since serial access hasn't changed in the 
engine, there must be some other change that peripherally affects serial 
port access. If that's so, then a bug report in the QCC would be in order.

I hope either Sarah or Phil will see this, since they are the serial/USB 
experts here. Maybe they have some comments to add or a workaround 
they've discovered.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com