PC COM 4-PORT or AST 4-Port & Windows 95 ------------------------------------------------------------ In order to install the RS-232C PC COM 4-Port or 8-Port you will need to do the following. This was tested in a W95r2 enviroment and is believed to function as well in W95r1 and WNT. The setting in my case was First adapter and IRQ7, I/O=2A8 to 2BF for the four serial ports. jp3: 2-3, jp2: open, jp1: 2-4. I already have com1 and com2 as well as lpt1: in my system. This procedure below gave me five serial ports for any use. Hardware part: First locate any free IRQ between 2 and 7, to be used for the cluster. Locate an array of IO addresses 2A0 to 2BF or 1A0 to 1BF if you attend to use the four pure serial ports. Otherwise be sure the no standard serial ports are occupied by the computer. The Jumpers: JP3: 1-2 = Normal mode, 2-3 = PC-MOS/386 and Windows NT/95 mode * My settings, 2-3 JP2: Both short = Compatible mode with the two first as Com1 & Com2 Both open = Enhance mode, four pure serial ports in a cluster. * My settings Both open JP1: Waitstates, 1-3 = <16MHz, 2-4 = >16MHz * My settings 2-4 The switch selects IRQ and base IO: SW 1 2 3 4 5 6 IRQ 2 3 4 5 6 7 SW 7 8 ON ON Compatible mode high address: 3F8-3FF Chan 1 Vector 2BF 2F8-2FF Chan 2 2B0-2B7 Chan 3 2B8-2BF Chan 4 ON OFF Compatible mode low address: 3F8-3FF Chan 1 Vector 1BF 2F8-2FF Chan 2 1B0-1B7 Chan 3 1B8-1BF Chan 4 OFF ON Enhanced mode high address: 2A0-2A7 Chan 1 Vector 2BF 2A8-2AF Chan 2 2B0-2B7 Chan 3 2B8-2BF Chan 4 OFF OFF Enhanced mode low address: 1A0-1A7 Chan 1 Vector 1BF 1F8-1AF Chan 2 1B0-1B7 Chan 3 1B8-1BF Chan 4 * My settings OFF, ON Software part: Now we have to mess with either the registry editor or control panel. My choice is the control panel due to the fact that registry editor is tricky. 1. Choose add new hardware, dont detect! 2. Find add new ports 3. Add new communication ports (Standard serial ports) 4. Press finish and go on, but do not boot your machine at any instance! Repeat step 2, 3 and 4 ONCE FOR EVERY NEW port you want to install. In this case we already don one so we continue three times! After this session we have to go back to the control panel again and select system. Now we are in the tricky part, we saw a lot of strange IRQ's and I/O ports in step 2 to 4, now it will be worse. 5. Select COM & LPT part 6. Depending on how your system was configured before with comports and printerports you will se different com & lpt ports so this described might vary. Find the first 4-port comport, in my situation it is com3: and select it (com1 and com2 is allocated to the standard system) 7. Goto ports and select baudrate to 115200 8. Select resource. 9. Change the ground-configuration to 8! This will make it possible for you to change I/O and IRQ by your own will. 10.Select the FIRST I/O in the cluster and change, in my case it is 02A0-02A7. 11.Select the irq and change, in my case it is 07. DO NOT BOOT YOUR COMPUTER! You will have to repeat this step 6 to 11 for every port you installed. It is wery important that IRQ and I/O is correctly assigned to the ports. It is also possible to install several 4-port or 8-port cards in the computer. This old card I checked out used the unbuffered 16450, it is possible to change them to 16550 series without any other changes. You can also speed up your slow 16450 or 16550 with a crystal-change, a multiple of the current frequency will do. 16550 amd 16450 can run at 115200 bps with the original crystal. I changed my crystal and achieved 115200 * 4 and all the way up to 115200 * 8. Good Luck! Peter Steen