I have an old Foxpro 2.5 Windows application that uses .fll subroutines for serial i/o. We have all the source code, including the assembler that was used to create the serial port access.
My customer would like to update it (I don't know why he is complaining, his 486 with DOS and Win 3.11 never blue screens!)
I looked at some technical articles about mscomm32 from Microsoft, but I still don't feel enlightened.
Anyone have any ideas about pointing me in the right direction?

Very few machines today even have serial ports, and youi often need special drivers to support them. MSCOMM32.DLL is 32 bit, and is emphatically NOT supported by WOW32, even though it can sometimes be coaxed into working anyway.

This can be done, you can get serial communications from today's hardware if you're finicky about what serial port add-on you get and what program or programming language(s) you try to support. It is what my favorite college professor used to call "a non-trivial exercise" to get it working though!

-PatP

Pat,
What I really really want, is to update the entire system to XP and Foxpro 6.0 or newer. I can get 2 port serial PCI cards if need be.
Thanks,
Jack

FoxPro 6.0 can support MSCOMM32.DLL as long as the serial card you get can support it too. Some cards require you to download a replacement MSCOMM32.DLL from the vendor's web site which has been customized to support that specific card.

Foxpro 6.0 came in several editions each with different packaging, demos, etc. The only FoxPro 6.0 edition that I'm really familiar with using is the one that shipped as part of Visual Studio 6.0, which came with a nice demo of serial port control using MSCOMM32.DLL. You can use that demo to test the serial port card to be sure that it is working properly before you start recoding anything, and you can also review the source code to see how to make things happen.

-PatP

Thanks,
I have Visual Studio 6.0. Will do some reading.