On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Carl Denk wrote: > Unfortunately I have zero Perl programming experience. Although since I > am familiar with "C", Basic, and a little Excel VBA, I could pick it up, > but my time is somewhat limited, and was hoping to find something with > minimum learning curve. I'm having enough problems with sharing files > between XP Pro/home, and Ubuntu Lucid. > It may be more than what you want to get into, but I use .NET for all my "glue" or temporary stuff. I was using Visual Basic.net and have since switched to C# but both languages are really easy to use. Visual Studio express is free from MS. MONO on Linux will run C# and I think I had seen a VB.NET compatibility project too if you wanted to go that way. I found a quick tutorial with google for serial port access: http://www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/smartprodcourse/technotes/docs/serial-= port-vb.pdf --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .