WTD: software that will monitor both sides of a serial connection.

Hi,

I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.

Now the hard part, my Dell laptop has no serial ports.

I have two usb/serial devices. Now I need software that understands ups 
ports.


Any good programms.

Thanks

Donald

how about just putting another laptop with another two serial ports in
the middle.  it'd be trivial code to write to read characters from both
serial ports and transmit them out the opposite port, then you could
print them out or do whatever analysis you wanted.  it would be sort of
a buffer as far as the equipment you are monitoring is concerned, maybe
changing the timing of the data transfer slightly but that's about the
only side effect.

Donald wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
> I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.
>
> Now the hard part, my Dell laptop has no serial ports.
>
> I have two usb/serial devices. Now I need software that understands ups
> ports.
> 
> 
> Any good programms.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Donald

There is a PCMCIA card w/ two serial ports.  (USB/Serial devices have
throughput issues.)

I've seen this PCMCIA card bundled with serial port monitor software.

Donald

> I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
> I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.
> 
> Now the hard part, my Dell laptop has no serial ports.
> 
> I have two usb/serial devices. Now I need software that understands ups 
> ports.


If you are trying to monitor actual arrival times then, as someone else 
suggested you would probably be better off with a PCMCIA card. 
Brainboxes (www.brainboxes.com) make such a thing as do Socket 
Communications (www.socketcom.com). In the past, when I've tried using 
two USB serial adapters I found that the latencies obscure the real 
traffic flow.

Docklight (http://www.docklight.de/) have a demo program of what you're 
asking for.

	Andrew

On Tue, 16 May 2006 20:12:39 -0600, Donald <donald@dontdoithere.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
>I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.
>
>Now the hard part, my Dell laptop has no serial ports.
>
>I have two usb/serial devices. Now I need software that understands ups 
>ports.
>
>
>Any good programms.
>
>Thanks
>
>Donald

there's a util called commlite which will monitor serial comms from a PC with no hardware, i.e. it
intercepts the OS comms calls & logs the data. It can also be used to monitor external data via the
com port.

Note that using USB you will not get good timing info as serial data gets packetised over USB. This
means if monitoring 2 lines with 2 USB adaptors you may not always be able to determine the relative
order of the messages. 

On Tue, 16 May 2006 20:12:39 -0600, Donald <donald@dontdoithere.com>
wrote:

>I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
>I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.

What kind of serial connection is on this line ? A true full duplex
communication or a simple half duplex protocol ?

If this is a simple half-fuplex protocol, these can be analyzed with a
single port and two diodes. 

* Connect the cathode terminals of the two diodes to the Rx pin on the
monitor device.
* Connect the signal ground of the monitor device to the pass-through
line signal ground
* Connect the anode of one diode to the Rx signal of the pass-through
line
* Connect the anode of the other diode to the Tx signal of the
pass-throuh line
* Start a serial line monitoring program listening to the monitor
device Rx pin

The bytes on the half duplex line will be on the same line on the
monitoring device, but in a typical half-duplex protocol it is not
hard to determine, which byte belongs to the pass-through line Tx or
Rx signal.

Even if the monitoring device is an Ethernet/serial or USB/serial
converter with huge latencies, the Rx and Tx characters are in correct
order. 

When using two separate USB or Ethernet converters, the Rx and Tx
bytes might appear in wrong order due to different latencies.

Of course, this single port with two diodes connection does not work
if there is simultaneous (full-duplex) traffic in both directions,
since any overlapping byte would be garbled and possibly all the
following bytes might also be garbled due to loss of synch, until
there is at least a single character time long silent period with no
activity on neither Rx nor Tx line. This full duplex garbling only
affects the monitor line, the pass-through traffic would continue
normally.

Paul
 

Donald schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
> I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.
> 
> Now the hard part, my Dell laptop has no serial ports.
> 
> I have two usb/serial devices. Now I need software that understands ups 
> ports.
> 
> 
> Any good programms.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Donald
What about portmon from

   http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/portmon.html

It helped me a lot (as well as all the other fine utilities mark 
russinovich has to offer).

And the best: no hassle, no installation -- just unzip und run it.
Highly recommended.

Greetings
   Dirk

Donald wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
> I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.
> 

If you can solve the lack of serial ports problem and have a PC
with two serial ports supported by DOS then I'd recommend 'dlm';
see my reply in this group to a similar request a short time ago.
Search this group for 'dlm dos pc'.

Regards,

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum

Donald,

have a look at

http://www.docklight.de/

They sell a tool by the name of  "Docklight" which not only monitors 2
serial ports but does a huge number of things more for serial debugging. And
it works with USB->SERIAL converters. You may download a free no-timelimit
evaluation version. This tool has proven to be top value for all our serial
problems. No fears: While it is a German company, everything is in English.

Regards
Ulrich

"Donald" <donald@dontdoithere.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:Romdna8NC_0KG_fZnZ2dnUVZ_v2dnZ2d@forethought.net...
> Hi,
>
> I am looking for software that will monitor two serial ports, so
> I can connect both Tx and Rx sides of a serial connection.
>
> Now the hard part, my Dell laptop has no serial ports.
>
> I have two usb/serial devices. Now I need software that understands ups
> ports.
>
>
> Any good programms.
>
> Thanks
>
> Donald