excerpted from Pfaffies List with permission from Bill Brothers 

From: Bill Brothers" <billbr@sjm.infi.net>
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 19:53:46 -0700
Subject: Re: PFAFF: Software communicating with machine
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CAUTION: This advice has no warranty. Don't change
things unless you understand them or you are willing to
accept what happens. If you follow these instructions,
you cannot harm your machine (computer or SM) nor
your software. If you change something in setup not
specified here, your computer may not boot. Please
be careful. Having said that, nothing changed here 
is permanent or destructive.

To chase the problem with communication, there are a couple
of places to look.
 1. When your computer starts, there is NORMALLY a
     sentence that says something like <<Press F1 for setup>>.
     The key it tells you to press may be different, but what
     you want to do is "setup" your computer. Normally,
     there is a big display full of technical details. What
     you are looking for is "COM" ports. On my computer
     this is under a menu called device settings. If you
     can find the reference to COM ports, verify that they
     are not DISABLED. The settings can be something
     like AUTO, COM1, 2f8,3f8, etc. If they are enabled,
     do NOT change anything. If they are not enabled, and
     you want to try it, enable the port(s), making sure
     that you only have one COM1 and one COM2. Setting
     two different ports to COM1 as an example is like
     trying to park two cars in the same parking place...
     very difficult to make work properly ;-) Usually an
     entry is highlighted using the arrow keys and changed
     with the keypad +- or page-up/page-down.

     Exit setup by pressing ESC or the keys specified on
     the setup screens. If you have changed anything, it
     should ask you to confirm that you want to save your
     setup.

  2. With Windows95 up and running, right-click the 
    "my computer" icon and choose Properties. You
    should see a dialog box that tells you about the
    system you are running. Select the Device Manager
    tab. Scroll down until you see the word "Ports". 
    If there is a + to the left of that word, click on the
    little + in the box. You should now see a list of
    communication ports on your computer. Are there
    any yellow exclamation points on the little pictures
    of connectors? If so, highlight that line and click
    on Properties. The dialog box that pops up has
    a section in the middle called "Device Status".

    If the device status says   
    	"This device has been disabled in hardware..."
   Then you must go through step one listed here.

    If the device status says
	"There is a conflict...."
    Then you may have a tough time resolving your
    problem. I would suggest finding a "computer friend"
    to help you step through the problem.

    If the device status says
            "This device is working properly"
    Then both Windows and the machine think that
    everything is OK. 

    One other thing to check is that nothing else is trying
    to use the COM port. FAX programs are famous for
    latching onto a COM port tenaciously.

This has been a very long post, but I hope that it will
help you find the problem.

Bill Brothers
San Jose, California USA
Email: billbr@sjm.infi.net 
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