Serial Port Monitor

I’m working on a BIOS for a Z80 computer with ISA bus extension and a ISA card containing serial interface, VGA and SD-card. Currently, the only way to interface with the system is the serial interface. Unfortunately some features like the Xmodem support are very tricky to debug. There is no terminal software I have found that would log the complete communication between the remote device and the terminal software. I was already thinking about writing a minimal terminal software with this capability, but then I found Serial Port Monitor. AND IT WORKED OUT OF THE BOX.
I had tried some similar software already but always met “cannot open port” issues. I know since X64 Windows serial port monitoring has become difficult – even Microsoft does not support their old Portman software anymore.
So count me impressed!

I’m working in the French national research organization (CNRS), and my work consists of developing experiment management software. I therefore write programs that communicate with all kinds of electronic devices (temperature controllers, dimmers, electronic scales, power supplies, cameras, frequency generators, etc.) under different communication protocols (modbus, RS232, RS422). , RS485, HPIB, TCP-IP…).
Lately, I have been writing a program controlling, among other things, an RS232 temperature controller. To send it information, I use register addresses in which I will read or write data. Unfortunately, in the various manuals that I have consulted, not all the addresses are provided. For example, to write the name of the temperature profile that I want to enter into the device, I have no information as to the address to use.
It was thanks to your software that I was able to find all the addresses I needed to write this program. To do this, I used the software provided by the manufacturer of the temperature controllers, I sent instructions to the device for reading and writing while your “Serial Port Monitor” software read in the background. I found it very easy to use, very complete, very reliable and very efficient. All the data was easily usable thanks to the different colors used. This is how I was able to know the type of instruction (data) and the addresses that I had to use.

The times of monitoring serial communication with special cables and extra hardware are over. No special cables or special hardware needed. This piece of sofware is great!

Surprisingly, this non-intrusive serial monitor tool can even be connected to a COM port already opened by an application to start analyzing the serial port activity. Moreover, the serial port sniffer has a unique functionality of simultaneously monitoring multiple COM ports. There’s also a terminal mode feature so that you can send data in various formats to the monitored serial port as if it was sent on behalf of a monitored application using the serial monitor. Because this is a complete software solution, you don’t need to worry much about any additional hardware.

I’m an industrial equipment/repair professional who frequently deals with old PLCs, and I’ve found Serial Port Monitor to be an invaluable tool for troubleshooting serial communications. When it comes to diagnosing and resolving issues in these systems, having a reliable and feature-rich tool like Serial Port Monitor is essential.