Howdy folks --
I'm having difficulty getting some additional serial ports running on my
machine in order to support radio communications.
Perhaps someone with WinNT administrator experience will have a couple of ideas
to help.
Here are the details:
machine: Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop.
operating system: WinNT 4.0 SP5 workstation.
latest Quatech drivers for NT are loaded & running.
COM port configuration:
COM1 - rear panel serial port.
COM2 - built in modem
COM3-6 - Quatech ports.
IRQ and base address rundown (from WinNT Diagnostics):
1: i8042prt - bus 0 ISA - 0060, 0064. [I think this is the keyboard and
mouse port driver.]
4: serial - bus 0 ISA - 03F8-03FF. This is COM1 (works fine).
5: LTmodem - bus 0 PCI - 1080-1086 & 1800-1807. This modem is on COM2
(works fine).
5: maestro - bus 0 PCI - 1400-14FF. [This is the soundcard controller. See
note below.]
6: floppy - bus 0 ISA - 03F0-03F5, 03F7.
7: WinNT Diagnostics doesn't list this, but the hardware boot setup process
shows the parallel port configured for IRQ 7, base
0378.
9: CBENT - bus 0 PCI - F500-F57F. This is a Xircom Ethernet PCMCIA card,
which works fine.
10: assigned to COM3-6, the Quatech COM ports. Doesn't show up in the WinNT
Diagnostics listing, but see the Event Log report
later.
12: i8042prt - bus 0 ISA.
14: atapi - bus 0 ISA - 0170-0177, 01F0-01F7, 0376, 03F6, 1050-1057, and
1058-105F.
15: atapi.
In addition WinNT Diagnostics shows other I/O port addresses assigned as
follows:
VGASave - bus 0 PCI - 01CE-01CF, 03B0-03BB.
ParPort - bus 0 ISA - 0378-037A.
ati2mpab - bus 1 PCI - 03B0-03BB, 03C0-03Df, 2000-20FF. This is the display
driver.
And a bunch of very low address I/O ports are used by PC compatible EISA/ISA
HAL device.
On this Dell laptop, the PCMCIA cards are not really managed by the WinNT
PCMCIA applet, but by a Softex PC Card Controller. The
Softex PC Card Controller shows the Quatech card as "available for use (Point
Enable)", IRQ=10 and base I/O at x300-31F.
It does seem odd that the "maestro" driver shares IRQ5 with the LTmodem.
However, they've done this since the day the laptop
arrived without apparent problems so far.
The Control Panel/Port applet shows:
COM1 - IRQ 4, I/O base address x3F8.
COM2 - defined, but the "advanced" button is grayed out so the applet
doesn't report on IRQ or base address values. RegEdit
shows a key in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ltmodem
named "ModemIsr" with a value of 5. The key "ModemIo"
has a value of x100.
COM3 thru 6 are defined as per the Quatech documented default, which appears
not to conflict on this machine: IRQ=10, and base
addresses of x300, x308, x310, and x318 respectively.
Upon startup, the Event Logger reports an error: "The status port for COM3
overlaps the control registers for the device." I
suspect the Quatech device is not operating, despite what the Softex PC Card
controller reports -- nothing resembling the device is
listed in WinNT diagnostics 'devices'... WinNT diagnostics does not show IRQ10
in use... nor does it show I/O port addresses 300-31F
in use.
Although the PC Card Controller shows the Quatech card installed, and the
Control Panel/Port applet shows everything is in order, in
fact no application is able to communicate with COM3 through 6. WriteLog, for
example, reports that COM3 or 4 is unavailable when
one attempts to configure a radio on it; WriteLog works fine on COM1 (the back
panel serial port). The Kachina software works fine
on COM1 but doesn't see the radio or tuning knob when configured to use COM3
thru 6.
The registry keys for the card appear correct according to the manufacturer's
documentation, except for one:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pcmcia\Database\Quatech
Inc\PCMCIA Quad RS-232 Serial Port
Card\AttributeMemorySize is in the registry with value x8100 (33,024) when the
documentation shows a value of 4096. But this is a
database entry so I'm skeptical that this really is doing anything. And I am
loathe to edit the registry without someone looking
over my shoulder.
The drivers and installer software is the most current version from the
manufacturer's website and, other than noted above,
everything aligns with the manufacturer's specs.
Any ideas?
-- Eric R3/K3NA
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