I work for a Research lab that uses instrumentation to retrieve data from
samples.  This data sometimes goes to a serial printer and I was wondering
if it is possible to get this data and put in a file.  I was wondering
where sources for understanding how to do this exist?  Are there any good
books on the subject?

I will have to use 16-bit VB 4.0 since we still have some Win 3.1 systems,
however, I will be moving to VB 5.0 very soon.  Waiting for the bugs to be
worked out.  Thanks for any replies.

Bruce Murphy

Bruce:

Check out 'Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications' by
Richard Grier.

Its available from Mabry Software (www.mabry.com) or from a great on-line
bookstore called Amazon.Com (www.amazon.com).

I bought a copy, and found it to be pretty useful.

Don Sayler.

I've been playing around with sending and receiving characters on a serial
port the past couple of weeks in a learning curve ... goal is to eventually
send and receive ascii data from a controller of sorts.  With VB 4.0
Professional Edition there is a MSComm communications control that I have
been using.

It's done for MS by Crescent Software, Inc. in Ridgefield, CT and I believe
they are also on www found from VB searches.  For now, I'm selecting a comm
port with a modem on it and just sending AT type commands and reading
modems response.  Have gotten a few errors (invalid comm port, comm port
not open, etc.) and have done a fine job a{*filter*} the system a few times.
Ha!

Hope this helps.  The support is there for both 16 and 32 bit.  I'm
thinking of moving to 5.0 but haven't done anything yet.  Don't know if
there are any improvements in serial communications there.
--
David K. Johnson