Inspect your hardware

 

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On a Windows - based PC with a USB or PCMCIA serial port extender installed, it requires a procedure to detect to what COM port a Rugloop driver for a monitor or pump should be set. 

To start with, one needs to know what serial ports are available on one's system.  
The only way to find out is through the Windows Device manager. 

In Windows 98 the best way is to create a shortcut to the Device Manager on your desktop:  

  1. right-click on the Desktop
  2. select New and click Shortcut 
  3. In the field labeled Command Line, type:


    To make it more easy for you to copy/paste, we've put the string in a text box.
    (replace C:\Windows\ with your Windows directory, if you installed it in a different directory)

  4. Click Next, type Device Manager when prompted for the name of this shortcut, and click Finish
  5. This will place a shortcut to the Device Manager on the desktop

For Windows2000 or WinXP, this little tool (click the link, select "save as", and put the downloaded file on your desktop) can help. 
It is a file for the Microsoft management console, which opens the device manager directly. 

The device manager (either opened from the shortcut or using the tool above) will present you a window comparable to the one below. 

You can open each device class by clicking on the '+' sign next to it, or close it by clicking '-'. 

To find the ports available on your PC, open the 'Ports' device class. In the example, a Quatech 4-port serial PCMCIA card is available that provides 4 serial ports, mapped to COM4->COM7. 

* A red cross next to a device (e.g. COM7 in the example) means that the device was disabled from the device manager. 
* A yellow question mark next to a device (e.g. the Canon Multipass L60 in the example above) means that no drivers are loaded for this device (so it is not functional).

If you write down the COM port numbers in your system, it is much easier to select the correct COM port in Rugloop. 

Two remarks:

* if you plug a USB or PCMCIA multiport in a different slot, Windows will assign different COM ports to the device, so Rugloop will need to  be reconfigured !!! ALWAYS use the same USB/ PCMCIA port ! 
* there is no fixed relationship between the sequence on the PCMCIA card ports connector (A, B, C, D) and the sequence of the assigned COM ports: connector A is not necessarily COM4 in the example above, but could be COM4,5,6 or 7. (even though it is MOST LIKELY COM4)