Serial Port Complete by Jan Axelson

Easy to understand for this beginner to serial communications!
Review written by: C. Rosenberg From Grand Rapids, MI
I read all the reviews I could find before buying this book, and they lead me to believe that I could find the help I needed to write a small program to control a bank of DVD players via RS232. Needless to say, this book gave me a lot of VERY useful serial bus information, especially on the "MSComm" Visual Basic serial port control. Chapter 4 gave me all the tips and hints I needed to "hack" together a first-draft application in under a day's work of coding!

Wasn't that helpful ...
Review written by: Gault From
The examples in this book were too advanced for the project I was working on. In the end it was just a waste of time. I wish I'd spent my money on a book more suitible to my needs. Nuff said.

A Very Good Start and Maybe As Far as YOU need to go
Review written by: John Matlock From Winnemucca, NV
You would think that as long as the RS-232 serial port has been around that every engineer would know all about it. But that's simply not true. People are still out there interfacing all manner of equipment using a serial interface.

In the Serical Port Complete you will find just about everything you need to know about interfacing to and programming for a serial port. Note that I say 'just about' everything you need to know, that's because who knows what you'll really be planning to do. Suffice to say that this is an introductory book. It assumes that you have little knowledge of PC's, a little knowledge of electronics. From there it tells you how to interface to an outside line using any of several common UARTs, and then how to program your PC to handle the resulting port.

If you are looking for something more complex; current loop or selecting data out of a stream, then I recommend you start here before going on the more complex literature. The programming in this book is illustrated using Visual Basic. If you work in some other language such as C++, it will not be difficult to convert.

A Good Serial Communications thru Visual BASIC Book - - - Hard to find!!!
Review written by: Melvin M. Manese From
i dont know why others didn't like the book. But for me, this is the best book for engineers who wants to interface their prototypes electronic projects to computers. questions i've been asking years ago about interfacing my projects using serial port are covered here...which you can't find with other books...(at least here in asia. The approach is practical yet accompanied by theories, a good combination in learning.)

So for those newbies as well as advanced users seeking for enlightenment about serial ports, why don't you try this book? for me, it is a treasure. Thank you very much Jan for sharing your knowledge. =)

Anyway, for those reviewers who criticizes the use of Visual BASIC in projects, all I can say is that:

Why make life complicated when you can make it simpler yet working??? besides, C C++ VB PASCAL etc. they all serve one purpose in the virtual life, to interface the real world and computers.They are like mathematical equations which may have different coefficients but has the same meaning/curve.

Get it???

Good work jan!!!

Very practical and easy to read
Review written by: jrw From Orlando, FL
I needed to interface an embedded controller to a PC's serial port for a senior design project and this was the only resource I needed. The discussion of MSComm assumes a knowledge of Visual Basic. The book also discusses the 8150 - 16550 UARTs and methods of directly communicating with it. Explains linking a uC to a PC via RS-232 very well. I did not get in to the RS-485 stuff.

The book also assumes a basic knowledge of electronics, although I'm sure you can get by without it. Most schematics are high level and easy to understand

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Serial Port Complete