Subj : Binkley Error message
To   : Fred Riccio
From : mark lewis
Date : Fri Mar 15 2013 11:12 am


 FR>> Any idea what this is trying to tell me?

 FR>> + 14 Mar 18:46:59 BINK begin, BinkleyTerm/Win32 Ver. 2.60 
 FR>> ! 14 Mar 18:47:06 BINK SYS00000006: GetCommState()

 ml> seems to be saying that the com port is broken or inaccessible...

 FR> Thats what I was afraid of.  The modem (external) is making a high
 FR> pitch noise (like a bad fan) too.

yeah, sounds like the modem has gone... at least without looking at it closer, 
anyway...

 FR> Can you even buy a serial card or modem any more?  Maybe at a
 FR> museum? 

there are places that still have the older equipment... most of it is pulls 
from machines being recycled... ebay might be a good place to start... or 
possibly your local freecycle group(s) where someone might have an older 
machine they will give you... i hesitate to suggest craig's list as i've never 
used it but some folks have had decent luck there, too...

 ml> what OS?

 FR> Win2K

 FR> What little information I could find on GetCommState says error 6
 FR> is "bad file handle"

if we were in the DOS days, i'd ask you to dump the BIOS section with the 
defined ports in it from debug but ya can't really do that with windows these 
days... besides, it has been so long that i'd have to dig for the proper 
address to dump anyway... [time passes] ahh! i found it! hahaha...

[file biostab.dbg]
d0040:0000
q
[eof]

then

debug < biostab.dbg

the first line contains the addresses of the ports discovered during boot... 
the first eight bytes are the serial ports and the next six are the parallel 
ports... each two bytes are reversed so an output like this

-d0040:0000
0040:0000  F8 03 F8 02 E8 03 E8 02-BC 03 78 03 78 02

is actually read as

com1 : 03 F8
com2 : 02 F8
com3 : 03 E8
com4 : 02 E8
lpt1 : 03 BC
lpt2 : 03 78
lpt3 : 02 78

the only "problem" is that if there is no 03 F8, the next one may be slid down 
to the "com1" slot... in other words, if the first serial port is set for the 
"com2" address of 02 F8, it may reside in the "com1" slot... in that case, even 
though the port is set for "com2", you'd use "com1" in your settings... but 
that only for software that relies on the bios table... software that has a 
built in table would not run into this li'l wicket...

)\/(ark

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 * Origin:  (1:3634/12.42)

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