Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] CallerID-Int-A Ingo Pakleppa Thu, 10 Sep 1998 23:18:05 -0400

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Yes, you can do it. Right out of the box, MS-DOS supports up to four COM
ports, and with drivers and special boards, you can have more.

HOWEVER, the confusion arises because when you use all standard default
settings, you get an IRQ conflict between COM1 and COM3, and between COM2
and COM4. IBM really screwed that up! Thus, many people will tell you -
incorrectly - that it is not possible to have more than two com ports.

What you need to do is first, come up with a list of the used IRQs. The 95
device manager can help you greatly with that. Locate two unused IRQs (or
only one if you don't need COM4). Next, take whatever hardware you want to
configure on COM3 or COM4, either a serial-port board or the internal
modem. Find the jumpers that control which IRQ and which COM port it uses,
and change the jumper so that it uses one of the unused IRQs. Finally, you
need to go into Device Manager and manually change the IRQ for COM3 (and/or
COM4) to the one you picked. If 95 won't let you change the IRQ, select a
different "Basic Configuration" and try again. This is kind of weird and
very tricky to understand!

The configuration is similar for DOS, except of course that you won't have
a device manager, but will need to configure ECSD directly through some
environment variable.

Ingo

At 03:01 PM 9/10/98 +0000, Carl Keyes wrote:
>Bill Walters wrote:
>
>Hey, not -so -techno-geek,
>
>No suggestions, just sympathy. I'm trying to set up a machine with 4 com
>ports.
>Sounds simple enough to me, but I'm being told all kinds of things,
>including
>even if it's possible. I got 4 com ports in and functional only to get
>my Zoom 28.8
>Comstar tech to tell me it needs either com 3 or 4 to function
>correctly. I have them currently
>occupied. 
>Does anyone have any insight or leads where I can get reliable info on
>com ports?
>How many can you have? Does an internal modem have to use 1-4?  I tried
>MicroSoft
>but no answers. I realize these aren't ECS specific, but they are
>crucial to it's function.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Carl K
>

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| Ingo Pakleppa            mailto:ipakleppa@ecs.com              |
| Microsoft Certified Professional + Internet                    |
| Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer                           |
| Eagle Creek Systems, Inc., P.O.Box 888, Bonsall, CA 92003-0888 |
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