USB to Serial Solution??

[geotac]

Hello,

I am new to this forum. We use Serial port and MSCOMM32 to communicate with our hardware modules which in general controls D.C. servo motors and collect data from sensors. The software is written in VB6 and all the DLLs are written in-house. I wanted to change the serial port with USB interface so i designed USB to serial module using FTDIs chip and using VCP drivers from FTDI. The module worked fine in my lab but at Customer's site it would give communication error or would stop communicating in between giving Error 8021. I updated the hardware driver but still could not find a solution.

My question what is the best solution to change the legacy Serial communication with USB interface. If needed i am ready to write whole new software but am looking for any starting point.

I hope i explained the problem clearly. Any advice is appreciated, Thank you.

[Jan Axelson]

The FTDI chips are a well established and solid solution for USB/serial. Typically the host software and device firmware need no changes except the host port number.

A couple of links found by searching on the error:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2299429/mscomm-serial-error-8021-internal-error-retrieving-device-control-block-for-the

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?682741-Trouble-with-MSCOMM.....

You could consider converting the host software to .NET using the SerialPort class.

[geotac]

Jan, Thank you very much for the reply. I think i would work on changing the host software to .NET.

I already have the FTDI EVAL module.

One more question can you recommend any hardware/software consultant who would help me with this project since i am on a tight schedule.

[Jan Axelson]

Richard Grier

http://hardandsoftware.com/