Customer Reviews

Serial Port Complete: Programming and Circuits for RS-232 and RS-485 with Disk

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book Serial Port Complete is an excellent review of the hardware and signal handling aspects of using the RS-232 and RS-485 systems. It deals well with many of the "rules of thumb" that many have had to learn the hard way over time. The book is limited in its help for the PC user. While it has many usefull examples for the Visual Basic user, most of these can not be extended to the C++ user in a simple clean manner. The Section on using the Windows API's is much too simplified to actually use it for anything usefull (even the author indicates it is limited).

I bought the book hoping that it would cover RS-485 well enough for me to use it as a reference for my next project. I wasn't disappointed. It has all the needed information.

The really nice thing I didn't expect was the helpful "guidelines for trouble-free RS-485 links", which included hints on how to deal with cable delay, impedance, termination, reflections, noise, topologies, circuit protection, etc...

I'm not sure how some of these other reviewers were disappointed. The book is very detailed (for the expert), but still easy to read (for the beginner). There is information about how to use microcontrollers and PCs, but it doesn't come at the cost of information on serial communication. In fact, I found that some of the examples using microcontrollers gave me a few ideas for my project.( )

BASIC is a completely logical language to use for showing examples in this book. It is simple and concise. Anyone who complains about it is a zealot, fighting some language war.

well, i was doing a project that required some very simple interface with a serial device, this book was the only book i brought and it coved more than enough material to make my project work.

about the VB code, well, what i can say, I was using VB.....

well, the book had a very in depth cover of the hardware and the standard of the rs232c. If you want to know how the electronics works, this is the book for you.

if you just want some quick and dirty tricks to make the connection work, this book will also do. as i said early, it had VB examples. in 15 minutes, you will know the basics, and programing in no time!

I needed to interface an embedded controller to a PC's serial port for a senior design project and this was the only resource I needed. The discussion of MSComm assumes a knowledge of Visual Basic. The book also discusses the 8150 - 16550 UARTs and methods of directly communicating with it. Explains linking a uC to a PC via RS-232 very well. I did not get in to the RS-485 stuff.

The book also assumes a basic knowledge of electronics, although I'm sure you can get by without it. Most schematics are high level and easy to understand

Once again, Jan Axelson has done an outstanding job of taking a difficult subject and explaining it to those of us who aren't rocket scientists. The source code works wonderfully and unlike many other books, she provides real-world examples.

My only complaint is that she left out examples for the popular PowerBASIC compilers for Windows (although the VB code ports fairly easily).

There are two must have books on the subject of serial communications - this book and Richard Grier's "Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications". Buy both books for your reference library. This book helped me in developing a Human Machine Interface (HMI) application with communications to serial devices. ...

This is a superb book to help you interface a hardware device that you built, to the PC's serial port. But it is much more than that. It also shows how to network multiple computers using the serial port (hence creating your own network!). In addition, it also has details on how to interface some microcontroller based designs to the serial port as well. The author does focus on Visual Basic to access the ports but gives clear pointers as to how to use other methods to access the serial port ( including C ). The disk even has dll's you can use for direct port access even though this is forbidden under WinNT/2000, unless you use the function CreateFile(). All and all, I thought I got more for my money than I could've hoped for. Thank you Jan Axelson!

Serial Communications are seldom used anymore in most places. Over time I have built many products from missiles to medical devices with this form of communication. In the last fifteen years, serial communications has moved from RS-232 to USB ports. This book answered my remaining questions about how to get serial to work on computer ports and provided the template for USB port communications that I have used later. Currently(2011), I'm working on a project that has both types of ports on the motherboard. Knowing how to support both types was invaluable in being an effective designer for this project. This book also gave me a better understanding of where to go to find other references on this area for my software designs. It allowed me to rapidly prepare a new software application for use in manufacturing testing.

A number of the machines I've developed lately have a number firmware boards connected to a central computer both by serial and USB ports. Finding the right reference for the older serial communication processes is difficult because they haven't been on the bookshelves for over ten years.

This book provides me with the information needed to help design efficient and reliable hardware communication interfaces that are suitable for both of these devices. The communication device will change with time, but the concept will be useful for decades. I am a better software developer because I have this book available on my reference shelves.

There are several practical current devices and projects in the book that help to expand the scope of its educational value. The principal area that this book covers is the electronic interface of communications devices and what to expect in the way of signal information as seen on the oscilloscope when connecting to the communication interface. When I first started designing and testing these interfaces the bit speed was below 9600 bits per second and the interfaces were all discreet devices. That was 30 years ago. Now, the bit rates are over 800,000 per second and the hardware is fully integrated except for the timing and filter capacitors and the only access to the internal gates is through pins on an ASIC or FPGA. So, it's important to know what the timing delays and the waveform signatures should be. I can testify that if the hardware is working incorrectly, the software will never be able to function. This book will give you that invaluable primary information.

As a software engineer I can tell you that the software files included with this book are only elementary. Furthermore, they are written in BASIC which, being an interpreted language, is to slow to test the high speed limits of the interfaces. I recommend that you rewrite them in C++ if you want to see if your interfaces act properly at the higher bit rates. Otherwise signal slope rates, line reflection, and timing delays can make a system that works well at 115,000 bps create symbol interference and lost bit recognition at 800,000 bps.

I am glad that I found this book and I'm sure that when the old serial RS-232 and RS-485 are forgotten this book will still serve as a useful reference on my shelf.

Another excellent book form Jan Axelson. Superbly written. Easy to understand lucid and still technically a completely reliable reference. Once the basics have been mastered one can develop a variety of applications (particularly control circuits). Equally useful for beginners, students and professionals. Good support material provided on auther's web-site. This book makes a good companion of the similar book on Parallel port interface by the same auther. Students looking for good projects will find this book extremely useful. Even self study is possible for a newcomer.

Highly recommended.

This book is very complete indeed, but it assumes you already know a fair bit about electronic circuitry. As a computer programmer with little electronics experience, I first had to read up on basic electronics. Also, some sections could have been easier to understand if there was more supporting details or examples. However, the book did answer most of my questions about the serail port and I was able to complete my programming project on time. I would rate this book a 3.5 to 4.0