Customer Reviews

Serial Communications Developer's Guide

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This book has lots and lots and lots of good information.

I read a few of the beginning chapters on serial port communications, and then skimmed stuff about the history of RS232, including BIOS interfaces, etc...

The thing that i found amazing was the variety of information. The author, for example, actually includes a home-brew windowing system. you can tell that this guy loves to do what he does, and he likes to think about *every* part of the system, from the O/S, to the user interface, to the software design.

I went to the Win32 section, since I wanted to use the windows communications API. I was able to write my application in less than 7 days!, so its better than a "in 21 days book!" however, i have been using Win32 for quite some time.

i also got, and will probably return, Serial Port Complete because I have Parallel Port Complete (a gem) and the content seems to overlap.

the Serial Communications Developer's Guide, IMO, will awe you with both minute technical detail as well as a good dose of pratical system level insights!

Although the book requires a lot of reading, it describes the use of the CD's source code in great detail. Included source code is for both DOS applications, DOS programs running as "Terminal" applications under Windows as well as for Windows applications.

Microsoft's MSComm Active X is ok where dialog based Windows applications are desired. But in a Windows 98 application that rapidly sends, receives and checks incoming data without user input, this software is an absolute MUST to have.

I recently purchased this book for my Meng Project, involving
controlling a vision head focus,zoom through a pic serial port connected to a pc with vision modelling.
I am surprised, that the code is written in a fashion which is
totally unbearable, hard to understand and just reflects the authors perception and imagination rather than discussing the
important communication building blocks and instructions.
Its totally ambigious to distinguish the original c++ routines and the invented commands written in form of classes.
I think if i read through all that material in header files i will lag so behind completing my original project.....
The paper quality is poor and not very pleasant to read.

I bought this book to learn how to program Win32 serial communications. It's obvious that the author knows his stuff. Chapters 3 thru 9 apply to MS-DOS and are not really relevant anymore. Otherwsie the source code is a excellent study in how to write a class library in C++ in addition to multithreading which, by themselves, make the book worth the price.

I used the libraries to write an ActiveX control that has an interface that only a FoxPro programmer would love. My money was well spent.

Serial Communications are seldom used anymore in most places. I have built many products missiles and medical devices with this form of communication. This book still answered many questions that remained from my former work. It also gave me a better understanding of how to use serial communications in a gene analyzer that I am working with. It allowed me to rapidly prepare a new software application for use in manufacturing testing.

A number of the machines I've developed have a number firmware boards connected to a central computer both by serial and USB ports. This book gives me the information to help design efficient and reliable communication interfaces to these devices. I am a better software developer by having this book available on my shelves. I only wish that I had found this book fifteen years ago.

Although the first part of the book is dated by its focus on early MS DOS communication drivers, the remainder of the book is quite valuable. I have never encountered any single source so comprehensive and so clearly written. It is now in my archives as a valued reference.

First of all, I have to say that this book provides you with a lot of details about serial communications. It even provides you with a complete library so that you can write the serial communication programming in half an hour.

The bad part is that I found later that Microsoft had included a MSComm control with VB and VC and it makes the library provided by this book useless. I used the library to write my project and it worked. Then I tried MSComm control and found that MSComm control was better than the library provided by this book. MSComm class gives you more control and it's much easier to use. eg: you don't have to worry about the multithreading because MSComm control has done that for you.

So, IMHO, if you are a VC or VB programer and you only want to write some simple Win32 serial port program, you'd better use MSComm control instead of turning to this book.

Estoy desarrollando un sistema de corte de planchas de acero controlado por computadora y necesito comunicar el PC con los controladores de los servomotores. Buscando un libro que me pueda orientar sobre el tema, encuentro que éste es ideal, pues tiene 800 páginas de jugosa información.

En libro es una guía completa de cómo realizar un sistema de comunicación particular y/o estandarizada entre el computador y cualquier sistema que se desee construir.

Además hace referencia contínua a la programación en C++ que es el lenguaje en el que solemos trabajar estos sistemas.

Me gustaría tener este libro!