Duh! The original of this seemed to have been bounced from LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU I sure didn't send it there, so I'm reposting. Sorry if it dupes on the list ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: Self To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: Is it just me being stupid,or do I blame MPLAB? Reply-to: mikesmith_oz@relaymail.net Date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 03:59:02 On 1 Sep 97 at 9:23, Werner Terreblanche wrote: > My Picstart Plus programmer running under MPLAB is really starting > to make me doubt my knowledge of computers. I seem to spend more > time getting the programmer to run than actually doing development > work on it. Its latest phenomena is to refuse to work on COM1 or > COM2, but only on COM4. The only problem is that I have only COM1 > and COM2 on my computer. Every time I try to set the thing up for > one of these two comm ports it gives me a message "Could not open > comm port" and then "Picstart Plus not found on COM4". I suspect > that it must be something to do with my Win95 configuration, but 4 > hours of fiddling which included re-installing MPLAB and Win95 could > not solve the problem. I knew my comm ports were still working > because I had no problems getting my mouse and modem to work on > them. It was just my Picstart Plus programmer that refused to work > on them. Out of desperation I eventually configured my COM2 as COM4 > and "voila!", MPLAB was happy with that. But why would it not work > on COM2 is boyond my comprehension. Has anybody else ever had a > similiar problem or is it just me? The Microchip documentation > does not mention this problem at all. > > When I was originally selected a programmer, I decided upon > the Picstart Plus because I thought that the fact that it was a > Microchip product would mean that all the usual bugs associated with > cheap programmers would be eliminated. Now I'm not so sure anymore > whether that is really the case. If I would buy another programmer > again I would much rather buy one from one of third party suppliers > present on this list. > Most likely the interrupts / port addresses for your com ports are not what the program is expecting. For a Windows program, using the Settings -> System -> Device Manager -> Ports -> Com x -> Resources should do the trick. Dos apps are somewhat different from app to app. Modern all-in-one motherboards will let you set these up in the bios setup area, if this doesn't work. MikeS