I think it's really odd that Delphi (at least the older versions) doesn't have serial port I/O built in.
Anyway, I use Cybermagic Comport - a simple VCL component - to do all the work. I bought it years ago and it doesn't seem to be readily available any more, but there must be plenty of alternatives around. Look around the Delphi VCL component suppliers. I understand USB communications to be much more complicated, and possibly to be beyond the scope of a solitary developer. However, you can use Windows' inbuilt support for 'serial port over USB', which involves buying a low-cost USB-to-RS232 converter and plugging that into a spare USB port. It offers a 9-pin RS232 socket to your hardware, and appears as a COM port to your software. This is great if you want to sell a hardware product which plugs into USB port - you just have to supply the converter with it, and your software can then talk to the hardware using the Cybermagic (or similar) VCL plug-in. One last warning about the Cybermagic component - my version only supports COM1-4. USB emulated RS232 ports are often given COM numbers outside that range, so you will probably need a more modern component than the Cybermagic one. Thack _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list -> [email protected] http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi
