On 22 Jun 98 at 17:22, Mark C. Barron wrote:

> The camera itself appears to be functioning properly, but, when I
> try to hook it up to my system, the software says that it can't
> find the camera.  The Com port is known to be working as I use it
> for my BACK-UPS, which I disable when using it for the camera.

  For some devices, a serial cable is sufficient if it provides three
wires:  Send, Receive, and Ground.  [Two is enough if communication
will be in one direction only....]
  There are, however, about 5 additional signals which may be
present, which are ignored by some devices and required by others.
So my first guess would be that maybe you're using a cable that
doesn't provide the signals that the software needs to see in order
to recognize the camera.

  I'm a bit worried, though, at your use of the term "disable".  This
suggests that you don't have enough serial ports for all of your
devices, and that's probably not a situation that you want to sustain
for long.
  If you have an internal modem, try to configure it for an IRQ
besides 3 or 4.  Consider using a PS/2 mouse instead of a serial
mouse.  If you have an external modem, put it and the camera on a
serial switch box -- you'll only be able to use one at a time, but
this should switch more easily than the UPS.

David G