Subj : Bink under WIN-XP
To   : Mike Luther
From : Peter Knapper
Date : Sun May 02 2004 11:07 am

Hi Mike,

ML> Recently a WIN-XP box was left in a basket on my
ML> porchstep (In humor here!) with the goal to establish
ML> BINK/MAX/SQUISH on it as well.  OK, I've finaly got it
ML> completely updated for critical error fixes and so on.

Sorry, I have never seen XP (and I will avoid it at all costs), so I cant offer
any specific suggestions, however something that has been pointed out to me
recently may apply. It seems Laptop manufactureres are being PUSHED by M$ into
an environment where there is no native SERIAL port on their machines. If a
user wants one of those, they have to install a PCMCIA card serial port. The
apparent reason for this is that USB is now seen by M$ for all serial type
connections (and forget all existing serial port H/W out there today!). As such
M$ have deliberatly altered the way XP "views" the serial H/W.

This may help explain the reason for the apparent difficulty you are
experiencing, standard serial ports are no longer serviced by default with XP,
you HAVE to do something extra to get them recognised. What that may be I have
no idea, however I have seen much comment that this is a serious issue for
support users with Laptops that absolutely MUST have a fully functional Serial
port to work with existing S/W and H/W, the M$ solution with XP is NOT cutting
it in many situations. EG: Just try sending a BREAK signal using a PCMCIA card
serial port, 90% of the ones available can't do that, and BREAK is one key that
is ESSENTIAL on Cisco Network H/W as a last choice option to recover a failed
box.

This is not much help, but it may give you some ideas on the options available.

Good luck..........pk.


--- Maximus/2 3.01
* Origin: Another Good Point About OS/2 (3:772/1.10)