We've seen Belkin USB/Serial port adapters turn the on board serial port(s)
off.  For some reason the drivers sem to clobber the on-board Serial port.

Try unloading the Belkin driver and your serial port may come back to life.
Just unplugging the USB adapter doesn't seem to do the trick. [Also remember
to check the BIOS -- some let you turn the on-board serial port off]

Another observation is that some USB/Serial port adapters are advertised as
faster than others.  If you want RS-232 serial communications above
38.4Kbaud you may need to pick your adapter carefully.

We've tried a number of  USB/RS-232 adapters for process monitoring and
general protocol snooping.  None seem to work as well as a board based
serial port.

Win Wiencke


_______________________________________________
http://www.piclist.com
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist