Windows 8.1 and Com ports

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John G
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2001 4:00 pm

Windows 8.1 and Com ports

Post by John G »

I am using Windows 8.1 and am trying to get a USB programming cable to work. My PC does not have a regular RS232 serial port. When I look at the USB cable, it identifies as COM-* with * being a number between 1 and whatever. I go into the CPS in the "configure" option to set the serial port to use, select that same number, and when I select "Read Radio", the PC pops up a window saying it cant access that serial port. I have had problems with USB serial stuff before, but those were always to do with drivers for the USB to serial hardware. That doesn't seem to be the case here. Do I need to just get a serial programming cable and find a PC with an actual serial port, or is there a way out of this? I might mention that I don't get along very well with WIndows 8.1.
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jackhackett
Posts: 1512
Joined: Tue Jun 10, 2003 8:52 am

Re: Windows 8.1 and Com ports

Post by jackhackett »

You've given us no clue as to which cable, cps software, and radios you are using.
Does the CPS allow you to select 'USB' as your port?
Jim202
Posts: 3609
Joined: Sun Sep 09, 2001 4:00 pm

Re: Windows 8.1 and Com ports

Post by Jim202 »

jackhackett wrote:You've given us no clue as to which cable, cps software, and radios you are using.
Does the CPS allow you to select 'USB' as your port?


As Jack has said, the USB port number is not the SERIAL port number. Most of the older radio software won't allow the use of a USB connection without some fancy footwork.

Also as Jack mentioned, the group is at the point of being of any further help, we need to know some details of just what your trying to do. With which radio are you trying to mess up and which software program are you trying to use to mess up your radio with. Also remember that most of the older software will not work under Windows. It needs to be run under a pure DOS package. Yes you will hear of some people being able to run it in a DOS box type operation. This is not a good idea to try and program an old radio this way.

If you have one of the newer radios that does use a Windows software package, then all our comments will be different. You need to be very specific with the information you supply the group here.

I use the term "MESS UP", because if you don't know what your doing, there is a good chance you might just put the codeplug into a state that you might have a hard time recovering from.

The best thing you can do once your able to read the radio is to save the codeplug onto a floppy disk. This way when the radio gets into a strange state by you playing with the codeplug settings, you have the ability to attempt to recover from it.

To save the radio codeplug once your able to read the radio, you need to change the location of the archive folder. Do not save it on the normal location. Because if you do a normal save to the archive folder, you will over write any information you have saved in the past. The floppy is the safest location. Then start the program again and it will revert to the normal archive folder the software is defaulted to.

Jim
John G
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2001 4:00 pm

Re: Windows 8.1 and Com ports

Post by John G »

Well, I thought I was asking a Windows 8.1 question that was only incidentally connected to radio programming. Sorry about that. I am using HVN9067 Professional CPS to read a MTX9250. And yes, the first thing I will do is to save the codeplug before doing anything else. This ain't my first rodeo. I did Google Windows 8.1 and USB to serial converter and what I found was that I was probably not using the latest driver. I found the driver that is supposed to be the latest one and installed it. No help. The cable is off eBay. I have used similar before and they appear in the hardware section of Windows as a serial port . I have never had issues with XP or 2K, just 8.1. I just recently acquired a nice little HP PC to use for fooling around with non important stuff like radios. I have a RIB, if I can find it, and a regular programming cable, if I can find it. I just thought that since the HP doesn't have serial ports, it would be a cheap and easy way to program. There I go thinking again.
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