• Serial port COM components for Windows 10

    From P E Schoen@21:1/5 to All on Wed Dec 13 14:58:14 2017
    Some time ago I posted about using an alternative to the SerialNG component
    for serial port functions using Delphi D4 pro. I had been using SerialNG for
    my Ortmaster project for probably 10 years, and it worked well on XP, Vista, Win7, and Win8. But on Win10 it would not work. I tried ComDrv32, which
    seemed to work OK, but on some machines it encountered problems that
    triggered cascading error messages that locked up the program until Windows detected it and shut it down.

    I also tried other components, such as AsynchPro, but that also had
    problems. I tried several components for Lazarus, and they seemed to work
    OK, but I was unable to port my entire Ortmaster project to that platform.
    That was a couple years ago, and since then I had to tell customers not to
    use Win10, and to use an older version of Ortmaster.

    A few weeks ago I started using my Win10 machine, and I was surprised to
    find that a simple TTY demo using SerialNG was now working. This was after a major Windows update that took several hours, so perhaps something was
    changed. I am using a proprietary USB device that uses a Microchip
    PIC18F2550, which enumerates as an "Ortmaster COM port", which requires a special driver, although the actual driver is the standard "usbser".

    I also found that Windows 10 would sometimes uninstall my special driver and replace it with its standard USB driver, so my application would not find
    the device. Windows thinks it knows better than I do, and says "best driver already installed". It is difficult to install an unsigned driver in Win10.
    So, I rewrote the code that finds the special device, and uses the "plain vanilla" driver instead, and now it works (mostly) flawlessly.

    BTW, is there another newsgroup or forum for Delphi that is more active?
    Seems like I am about the only one posting lately.

    Thanks,

    Paul

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  • From JJ@21:1/5 to P E Schoen on Sat Dec 16 17:15:39 2017
    On Wed, 13 Dec 2017 14:58:14 -0500, P E Schoen wrote:
    BTW, is there another newsgroup or forum for Delphi that is more active? Seems like I am about the only one posting lately.

    Thanks,

    Paul

    Embarcadero has a newsgroup server (forums.embarcadero.com), but it's not
    well maintained and it's no longer reliable. I'd suggest using Embarcadero's forum (web based). I can't remember the address but it should be easy to
    find from their home page.

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  • From Mark-@21:1/5 to All on Sat Dec 16 15:18:44 2017
    JJ wrote:

    Embarcadero has a newsgroup server (forums.embarcadero.com), but it's
    not well maintained and it's no longer reliable.

    That was the past. I access the forums, almost every day, via NNTP
    without issue.

    Using XanaNews to write this and just completed reading new post on forums.embarcadero.com.

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  • From P E Schoen@21:1/5 to Mark- on Sun Dec 17 04:00:25 2017
    "Mark-" wrote in message news:p13dgk$1gd$1@gioia.aioe.org...

    JJ wrote:

    Embarcadero has a newsgroup server (forums.embarcadero.com), but it's not
    well maintained and it's no longer reliable.

    That was the past. I access the forums, almost every day, via NNTP without issue.

    Using XanaNews to write this and just completed reading new post on forums.embarcadero.com.

    I went to that forum and found I already had an account from some time back.
    I didn't find anything on Delphi 4. I guess it's now an antique!

    Thanks,

    Paul

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