[ILUG] Testing COM ports on Gigabyte Motherboard.

[Dave Airlie]

Well either 

a) the ports are switched off in the BIOS, go into the BIOS and make sure
the ports are set to Enabled and the IRQ are either auto assigned or set
to 4 and 3 (for com1 and com2), then if it still doesn't work open the
case and plug the cables coming from the serial ports into the motherboard
( a common problem with most large PC manufacturers, they forget to plug
things in a lot) ... make a cable and solder pin 2 on cable one to pin 3
on cable two and vice versa and solder both pin 5s together, 

put the cable between the two serial ports,
	a) use two minicoms under Linux open ttyS0 in one and ttyS1 in the
other set the baud rates equal, no hardware flow control, no software flow
control and try typing letters across the cable,
	b) use two hyperterms under NT

Another option is to get a single serial connector solder pin 2 to pin 3
and use it on a single port (some old SCSI jumpers will fit across these
two pins also.. very handt).... so one copy of minicom should receive what
you type .. of course may sure local echo is turned off :-)..

And if none of the above work you probably have a broken serial port..

Dave.

On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, John Gay wrote:

> 
> 
> Thanks for the tip. I've got Linux set-up with a PS/2 mouse and it works. I
> don't really want to risk breaking anything by changing to a serial mouse when
> there should be another way to test the port without tinkering with working
> settings. Like I said, It could just be wrong setting in BIOS, I'm rather
> BIOS-phobic. Any other tips for checking the COM port will be welcome. I have a
> working Palm III and a good cradle, they both work with the PC here at work. Do
> you know of some way to use these to verify the COM ports? I also am aware that
> IRQ conflicts with my modem might also be the culprit, I just don't know enough
> about these IRQ and COM port setting.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>      John Gay
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
------------ David Airlie, David.Airlie at ul.ie,airlied at skynet --------
Telecommunications Research Centre, ECE Dept, University of Limerick \
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~airlied	-- Telecommunications Researcher      \
--- TEL: +353-61-202695 -----------------------------------------------