Creating a COM Port

[Craig Lister]

Hi guys.

I have an application I have created, which sends and recieves data
from a COM port. It's simple text going back and forth.

Sometimes, It's hard to get the right test data onto the device to do
testing with... so I would like to create a fake COM port somehow...
so that it shows up as COM4, for example, which would allow me to
connect my device to this COM port, and then I can send what ever data
I want back to my device.

Is this possible? Like a TCP server, except, a COM server.

 

[Rick Lones]

Hi guys.

I have an application I have created, which sends and recieves data
from a COM port. It's simple text going back and forth.

Sometimes, It's hard to get the right test data onto the device to do
testing with... so I would like to create a fake COM port somehow...
so that it shows up as COM4, for example, which would allow me to
connect my device to this COM port, and then I can send what ever data
I want back to my device.

Is this possible? Like a TCP server, except, a COM server.

Like Peter, I find your description a bit puzzling as to what you really want to
accomplish. Reading through it again, I am guessing that maybe you are having
difficulty getting your "device", whatever it is, to send a stream of data that
is targeted toward testing your PC-side application.

In this case what you can do is emulate the device (or at least its comm stream)
with a diagnostic type PC-side program which also talks out a (second) serial
port. Then connect that emulator's serial port to your main PC app's serial
port through a null modem cable. The programs are now talking to each other in
a quite realistic way and you have complete control of the dialogue for testing
various features. I have used this kind of setup during protocol development
projects, it can be useful in the early stages.

HTH,
-rick-