USB to Serial switch

[obrien]

Hello,

I am trying to diagnose intermittent serial problems on a server that has a USB to Serial switch attached. The switch is a 16 port 19" rackmount, model name usb-16com-rm. It uses the FTDI chip.

My problem is that PC Doctor does not see the serial ports. When PC Doctor is run from inside Windows it just sees each of the 16 ports as a USB device and does not run the com diagnostics on it. When booted from DOS on the flash drive, it does not detect it at all.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

[fwilson]

obrien,

DOS will not see the serial ports because it requires windows drivers for the USB port to emulate a serial port.

In Windows PCDR is dependant upon the driver to interface with the device.  Serial port testing is done by IRQ and DMA so this may be where the issue is.  We have never tested on one of these units so I don't have a good answer for you.

Are the drivers installed properly? Are all 16 ports visible in device manager?

-Fred

[obrien]

Hi fwilson,

thanks for your reply. The drivers are installed properly in Windows. It sees all 16 ports in the device manager. When I run PC Doctor in Windows it shows 16 USB-Serial devices, but only tests the USB and not the serial. Unfortunately the manufacturer doesn't have any diagnostic programs available for the device either.

Thank you for your help anyway :-)

[fwilson]

obrien,

I wish I could have been more help, this is a pretty specialized piece of equipment and up to this point we have not had any requests to test it.

-Fred