Hello Listers:

Com 1 [3F8H/IRQ4] and 2 [2F8H/IRQ3] onboard serial port settings in the
Award BIOS of my ASUS P5 A-B board with an AMD K6 II 450 MHz CPU are
consistent with the Properties settings in the Device Manager of Win 98 SE
and both are reported as working properly without conflict.
Nevertheless, I can no longer get my AGFA Smile digital camera or my Palmax
PDA to connect through them.

As a further test, I tried to install a serial mouse on them and it was not
recognized either. I switched the connections, removed and reinstalled the
software without effect. I also installed a patch for the AGFA software that
is supposed to address camera/software problems. Fruitless! . I have
replaced both serial cables, checked and rechecked my connections. No
change! The camera software does not require specifying the port being used
but the PDA does. Neither are USB wise.

The problem became apparent around Christmas, when I loaded my son's Minolta
digital camera software. His camera was not recognized when we attempted to
download pictures from it. Immediately thereafter, the same thing happened
with my AGFA and its software. Removal of the Minolta software did not
improve the situation. A few days before, I had installed a new 250-Watt
power supply in replacement of a still working 7-year-old 200-Watt one.
I subsequently did a clean install of Win 98 SE using my upgrade CD and
followed the Performing A New Installation section in my Win 98 SE Getting
Started manual. No change

Since then, I have added a Promise Ultra DMA 66 PCI card to which a 17GB
Quantum Fireball HD containing the operating system is connected. After the
addition, I did a drive reformat and another Win98 SE installation. A 6 GB
Quantum and SPARQ 1GB internal drive are connected to my Primary on board
IDE and a Mitsumi CD burner and a CD drive are on the Secondary IDE. There
is a 56 K internal modem on Com 4, IRQ 5 and a Logitech Trackman Marble
[PS/2] mouse on IRQ 12. A UMAX 600 S scanner has its own SCSI card in an ISA
slot. The DeskJet 812C printer is connected to the Parallel port. All are
functioning perfectly.

I have not updated the BIOS. It is revision 1007.A. The one on the spare
computer with a newer motherboard is the original 1008. As I recall, the
newer BIOS fixes problems that would not be on my computers.

The camera and mouse both work properly on my spare computer. It also has a
P5 A-B board. The CPU is an Evergreen MXPro 200 MHz CPU and there are fewer
hardware add-ons. Incidentally, the attempt to load the Minolta software on
the spare machine caused a similar problem. After I formatted its drive and
did a clean install of Win98 SE the ports are fine. However, the PDA cannot
connect with its software on either PC so I suspect that there may be
something wrong with the PDA itself. The PDA had worked fine for a couple of
years but the camera and its software were only installed last December. I
am not sure whether the PDA/computer connection worked after the camera
software was installed and used.

Where am I going wrong? All help would be most appreciated.
TIA,
Peter Darrach

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