Hi Mike,

 ML> Recently a WIN-XP box was left in a basket on my 
 ML> porchstep (In humor here!) with the goal to establish 
 ML> BINK/MAX/SQUISH on it as well.  OK, I've finaly got it 
 ML> completely updated for critical error fixes and so on.

Sorry, I have never seen XP (and I will avoid it at all costs), so I cant
offer any specific suggestions, however something that has been pointed out
to me recently may apply. It seems Laptop manufactureres are being PUSHED
by M$ into an environment where there is no native SERIAL port on their
machines. If a user wants one of those, they have to install a PCMCIA card
serial port. The apparent reason for this is that USB is now seen by M$ for
all serial type connections (and forget all existing serial port H/W out
there today!). As such M$ have deliberatly altered the way XP
"views" the serial H/W.

This may help explain the reason for the apparent difficulty you are
experiencing, standard serial ports are no longer serviced by default with
XP, you HAVE to do something extra to get them recognised. What that may be
I have no idea, however I have seen much comment that this is a serious
issue for support users with Laptops that absolutely MUST have a fully
functional Serial port to work with existing S/W and H/W, the M$ solution
with XP is NOT cutting it in many situations. EG: Just try sending a BREAK
signal using a PCMCIA card serial port, 90% of the ones available can't do
that, and BREAK is one key that is ESSENTIAL on Cisco Network H/W as a last
choice option to recover a failed box. 

This is not much help, but it may give you some ideas on the options available.

Good luck..........pk.


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