Batboard

I was looking at an "off-lease" Win 7 desktop at Tiger Direct that I noticed has a serial port on the back.
Does Win 7 Pro support serial based comms? Has anyone seen or tried this with CPS??

Mark

Any windows post 95 will obviously support rs232 BUT as far as I've experienced no radio software Simoco OR Motorola work post XP. For this reason I have an old Toshiba XP Pro SP3 laptop with a PCM->RS232 card and Oracle VM on my new win8 laptop for creating the codeplugs. I've had no real luck getting MCS or XTL CPS to work on Win7 and they HATE Win8 so keep that in mind. If you want a programming laptop make it XP Pro SP3 until the manufacturers decide to catch up. I had a dig at Moto myself over this, they won't support their old radios but expect Microsoft to support their old software to make the Moto software work. Told Moto if they expect everyone to be up to date then maybe they should be up to date themselves (didn't go down well).

I have a Win7 laptop that's only a few years old and the serial port in the docking station works fine on ASTRO25 portables with the after market cables from ebay. I upgraded to the USB cable so I don't have to be docked to program, but never had any issues with it. You only run into Win7 issues if it's 64 bit instead of 32 bit.

Yes. Win7 supports native serial ports. As others have said, 32 bit is the way to go for older (legacy) CPS.

Even Windows 8.1 supports serial ports - either a "real" serial port or through a PC Card or USB-serial adapter. I run legacy stuff in a HyperV VM on Win 8.1 64-bit - works fine.

Thanks for the replies gentlemen....I wasn't aware and learned something new today.

tvsjr, Microsoft doesn't explain hyperv vm that well so could you give a quick summary as to how it works? I'm using new win 8.1 machine and just getting familiarized with it at this time.

mike

AL of our new Toshiba laptops on the tech bench at work run Windows 7 professional. the laptop itself doesn't have a 9 pin serial but the Toshiba docking station does have and it works really good. Haven't had any issues with using the serial port on the docking station.

mike m wrote:tvsjr, Microsoft doesn't explain hyperv vm that well so could you give a quick summary as to how it works? I'm using new win 8.1 machine and just getting familiarized with it at this time.

mike

It's known as "Client Hyper-V" on Win8/8.1 (instead of simply HyperV on servers). It's a replacement for the "Windows XP Mode" in Win7. Basically, it lets you run a computer "inside" a computer.

You can do the same thing (for non-commercial use) with VMware Player, free as well.

VMware Player is probably simpler.

Thanks for the replies tvsjr,

Sorry for the late reply,

I was able to find all required drivers for my USB-ser converter and so far win 8.1 on a dell venue 8 programs everything I had on a win xp desktop. this includes xts5k, xts3k, parallax basic stamps, microchip old compiler and programmer, GPS of various models and vintage, old cad software for milling machines, so far I have not had any problems with any program that had a serial port on win xp that won't run on win 8.1.

update, loaded Astros cps 05.03.00 and now it gives a com error, previous working version was a prior 05.00 but of course I also upgraded a desktop with 05.03.00 and programmed all my xts3k's radios first on the desktop to make sure everything was working fine.

mike m wrote:update, loaded Astros cps 05.03.00 and now it gives a com error, previous working version was a prior 05.00 but of course I also upgraded a desktop with 05.03.00 and programmed all my xts3k's radios first on the desktop to make sure everything was working fine.

Do you have a com port on the computer? Or a USB dongle plugged in to emulate a com port? The older CPS applications for radios that don't support factory USB will puke upon startup if they don't see a com port

usb ports only on both pc's and the same usb-serial converter, rib original rln4008b, original xts3k cables the same setup on both the tablet/pc and the desktop pc but only the desktop works with xts3k, both work fine with xts5k and other vendor radios.

i've been using the same setup with usb for several years on all of my xts3k's on the desktop with usb only and never an issue until the new laptop/tablet.

I'll play with it some more and recheck the port settings but as i said the usb-serial converter works on numerous other programs even other vendor radios with their own serial to radio rib boxes connected to the same usb-ser converter, ie ge rib box works on both setups. Also I just updated all drivers for the usb-ser.

I may also try a win 7 laptop and see how it does, the only variable is the rln4008b rib boxes, tried 3 original rln4008b's and they only work on the desktop.

Oh, so CPS is starting normally? And just won't talk to the radio when you hit read? I thought it was puking upon startup

I'll try another USB-Serial converter, like a prolific model, and see if it will read the 3K.

IOgear GUC232A.

that's better since I know someone who has the IOgear that I can borrow.

I'm finally switching Win 7 to 10. Does Windows 10 support serial ports?