[BC] Visual Basic ver 6 and MScomm

[Jeff Glass]

Hello:

I'm looking to communicating with someone who has expert experience with the
VB MScomm function. I am writing a VB program that is for accessing a piece
of hardware that is configurable over an RS-232 port. I'm using the
Rthreshold variable set to 1, which triggers a comm event for each and every
character received - Theoretically. I have my prototype program working with
my win2000 machine and functioning as expected. The same program loaded on
windows 98 has to receive four characters to trigger a comm event while the
win2000 requires only one character to trigger a comm event. I cannot figure
out why this is happening. I checked the version number of MScomm32.ocx on
the win98 and win2000 machines, and they are the same. InBuffer on both
operating systems is set to 1024.

My guess is that there is a buffer somewhere, improperly configured, on the
win98 machine but darned if I know what that would be or how to chane it.
BTW, the program works fine when installed on a different win2000 machine.
Have not tried Win XP until I can get an appropriate install packager.

Ever seen this before? Any idea where I could go to get the difinitive
answer about what's going on? NIU comp Sci can only answer questions that
relate directly their classes and that's as far as their knowledge goes.
I've done some googling to find the answer, but no luck.

Worst case, I will have to have separate installables for each O/S, which
brings me to another question. Do you know of any good "install" packagers
available that are O/S smart; that is, they will install the required files
for the given O/S of the host machine. The VB6/SP6 compiler I'm using des
not appearto be that smart, unless I'm just not using it properly which is
entirely possible. I"packaged" my project and attempted to install it on my
win NT 4/SP6A machine and, during the install, I got a prompt that the
windows installer needed to download some updated files and to reboot. I did
that and my computer came up with BSD! Required a complete burndown and
reload of winNT O/S. So, the version of the installable app is going to need
to know what O/S the host uses or, disaster!

I want to make this project supportable over more than one O/S platform. So
please let me know if you have a favorite install packager for Winblows.
BTW, this is going to be a free program so I'm doing this only for fun,
experience and amusement. Suggestions for a less stressful means of
amusement would probably be good fodder for another thread, I suppose :-)

Thanks in advance,

Jeff Glass
WNIU WNIJ
Northern Illinois University