Serial port

[Petescarclinic]

Hi Donno if this is the correct forum or not as its a bit of both.

 

I'm a mechanic and bought a car diagnostic tool which works using a computer via ebay.

i planned to use it on my laptop since buying this ive later learnt the software only works in msdos and must be in fat16 file format and requies two serial ports .

my laptop has one and msdos doesnt reconise my plug and play hardware. any advice on this matter would be greatfull as this is my bread and butter

[londonles]

Hello Peter

 

FAT 16 was a file system used by Microsoft on OS up until windows me,after that they used FAT32.

 

Some older pc,s have 2 serial ports although these days most modern pc utilise usb. You can buy a usb to seria port splitter (RS232).

 

Win XP vista do not use msdos as such although they give an interface that looks like it.

 

Probably best way forward is to find an old laptop/ pc on win98 and hopefully with 2 serial ports

 

Regards

 

Les

[Ronald]

Hi Pete, I was repairing a PC yesterday at work and replaced the motherboard. In the process I noticed that the board has a plug that can accept an additional serial port (there's only one jack on the chassis). With this in mind I was thinking about your situation. I don't know but I wouldn't expect a laptop to have this port on the motherboard because of the space limitations in a compact device like a laptop. However, you might find an inexpensive, used PC with DOS and two serial ports that could be put on a roll-around cart.

 

Hope this helps,

Ron

 

Hi Donno if this is the correct forum or not as its a bit of both.

 

I'm a mechanic and bought a car diagnostic tool which works using a computer via ebay.

i planned to use it on my laptop since buying this ive later learnt the software only works in msdos and must be in fat16 file format and requies two serial ports .

my laptop has one and msdos doesnt reconise my plug and play hardware. any advice on this matter would be greatfull as this is my bread and butter