P E Schoen
2017-12-13 19:58:14 UTC
Some time ago I posted about using an alternative to the SerialNG component
for serial port functions using Delphi D4 pro. I had been using SerialNG for
my Ortmaster project for probably 10 years, and it worked well on XP, Vista,
Win7, and Win8. But on Win10 it would not work. I tried ComDrv32, which
seemed to work OK, but on some machines it encountered problems that
triggered cascading error messages that locked up the program until Windows
detected it and shut it down.
I also tried other components, such as AsynchPro, but that also had
problems. I tried several components for Lazarus, and they seemed to work
OK, but I was unable to port my entire Ortmaster project to that platform.
That was a couple years ago, and since then I had to tell customers not to
use Win10, and to use an older version of Ortmaster.
A few weeks ago I started using my Win10 machine, and I was surprised to
find that a simple TTY demo using SerialNG was now working. This was after a
major Windows update that took several hours, so perhaps something was
changed. I am using a proprietary USB device that uses a Microchip
PIC18F2550, which enumerates as an "Ortmaster COM port", which requires a
special driver, although the actual driver is the standard "usbser".
I also found that Windows 10 would sometimes uninstall my special driver and
replace it with its standard USB driver, so my application would not find
the device. Windows thinks it knows better than I do, and says "best driver
already installed". It is difficult to install an unsigned driver in Win10.
So, I rewrote the code that finds the special device, and uses the "plain
vanilla" driver instead, and now it works (mostly) flawlessly.
BTW, is there another newsgroup or forum for Delphi that is more active?
Seems like I am about the only one posting lately.
Thanks,
Paul
for serial port functions using Delphi D4 pro. I had been using SerialNG for
my Ortmaster project for probably 10 years, and it worked well on XP, Vista,
Win7, and Win8. But on Win10 it would not work. I tried ComDrv32, which
seemed to work OK, but on some machines it encountered problems that
triggered cascading error messages that locked up the program until Windows
detected it and shut it down.
I also tried other components, such as AsynchPro, but that also had
problems. I tried several components for Lazarus, and they seemed to work
OK, but I was unable to port my entire Ortmaster project to that platform.
That was a couple years ago, and since then I had to tell customers not to
use Win10, and to use an older version of Ortmaster.
A few weeks ago I started using my Win10 machine, and I was surprised to
find that a simple TTY demo using SerialNG was now working. This was after a
major Windows update that took several hours, so perhaps something was
changed. I am using a proprietary USB device that uses a Microchip
PIC18F2550, which enumerates as an "Ortmaster COM port", which requires a
special driver, although the actual driver is the standard "usbser".
I also found that Windows 10 would sometimes uninstall my special driver and
replace it with its standard USB driver, so my application would not find
the device. Windows thinks it knows better than I do, and says "best driver
already installed". It is difficult to install an unsigned driver in Win10.
So, I rewrote the code that finds the special device, and uses the "plain
vanilla" driver instead, and now it works (mostly) flawlessly.
BTW, is there another newsgroup or forum for Delphi that is more active?
Seems like I am about the only one posting lately.
Thanks,
Paul