Don Woodall wrote to Trevor Davis on 04-18-1998
DW>       It is my understanding that in OS/2, the mouse HAS to be on
DW> COM 1.  Also, as has already been mentioned,  OS/2 loads the mouse
DW> driver before it loads the com ports.  The mouse and com ports use
DW> separate drivers.
Mouse can be on any useable comm port but scanning for it is iffy at
best on 3/4, especially IRT interrupt conflicts. 
 
DW>       Now for the fun part.  You can have TWO "COM 1's."  One for
DW> the mouse, and one for the "COM Ports."  The TWO "COM 1's" must,
DW> however, have different IRQ's and addresses.
Not with COMM.SYS / VCOMM.SYS.  If the traditional comm 1 (0x3F8, IRQ
4) is seen by the mouse and used, you'll play hell getting comm.sys to
put another port - say 0x3E8, IRQ 5 - in there!  It wants to promote
the 'normal' order up one port so now a 'normal' system becomes COM1:
0x2F8, no com2 and you will have to define the com3/4 paramters - it
won't pick them up. I never did find a way to get COMM.SYS to leave me a
hole at com1 - and I really tried.  Wound up with the mouse on com2
(usual parms) and redefined anothe com2 over that.  Worked OK.  A lot
of the was back in the 2.0/2.1 days when Ray Gwinn was a true knight in
shining armor rescueing the OS/2 community with SIO.
Will Honea 
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