My Wondercon 2013

Yup, I was at Wondercon today, Friday March 29 2013. There are bunches of Star trek panels this year so it seems that Star trek is back again. Also back again is Geek and Sundry, exemplified by this Codex costume which I though was great, but the actress wearing it pointed out that it was missing some red jewels on the shoes; Don't sweat the small stuff, that was a tremendous costume.

There was some sort of spaceship on the trading floor.

                         The cockpit resembles the cockpit of the

Rotary_Rocket.

The cockpit resembles a transparent submarine that was almost eaten by Sharkzilla.

Fin.

My How To Install USB Drivers Into Windows 8 Part 3

First, read through the "

Install Dinex Drivers into Windows 8" and follow that procedure in order to install the USB comm port driver in the first place. Then read through "How To Install USB Serial Converter.doc". And before doing more things with the computer, it is probably a good idea to set up a restore point.

It isn't necessary to follow the re-boot procedure in order to change the COMM port number or to delete the com port.

How to do it? First, plug in the plug-and-pray device to a USB port on the computer. The computer should make some kind of tone, if the sound device is working and the sound volume isn't muted.

Find the pop up menu off the right edge of the screen, select Settings, and then click on "Control Panel".

In the "Adjust your computer settings" pop-up window, select "Hardware And Sound".

Right click on the device in question, in the example shown the device is a Dinex T2-MK-232 USB To Serial Interface.

Click on the "Hardware" tab.

Click on "Properties".

Click on the "Change Settings" shield. This step is different from the previous procedure. The shield doesn't appear until the driver has been installed successfully.

Click on "Port Settings".

Click "Advanced".

Click on the Com Port Number to see the pop-selection window.

The Super Download program can use any COM port. The real

time logic monitor can use COM 1, COM 2, COM 3, or COM4. Most software uses COM1 as a default. Select COM1 if possible. Then Click OK.

Click OK a five more times to exit. Unplug the USB plug-and-pray device. Then plug the USB plug-and-pray device back in. The USB serial port will then have the selected COM port number and function.

Advanced Troubleshooting.

Why is a COM port labeled as "in use" ? This happens because a USB to serial device was previously installed. The "in use" item might be the mouse or the modem.

In order to free up one of these "in use" COM ports, it is necessary to find the disused USB item and plug it in to the computer, one last time. Follow this procedure as far as

the "Adjust your computer settings" pop-up window, select "Hardware And Sound". Right click on the device in question, then select "Uninstall".

This exercise will free up the COM port. If the

disused USB item is plugged in again, the computer will automatically install it next time and then it will be assigned to a COM port again at that time. The idea is to uninstall a disused USB item before the item gets lost.

It might be possible to remove an "in use" COM ports by doing it manually. (

From M.I.5¾ )

Not such an easy one if you don't know how.

Open a command window.

Now set an environment variable by entering the line

"set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1" - without the quotes obviously

then enter

"start devmgmt.msc"

In the box that opens, select "Show hidden devices" in the 'view' menu.

Now if you expand the section on COM ports, all the COM ports that have ever
been created will be displayed, the non present ones being in gray. You can
uninstall away anything that you don't want (right click, select uninstall).

fin

My How To Install USB Drivers Into Windows 8 Part 2

First, read through the Install Dinex Drivers procedure from "

Install Dinex Drivers into Windows 8" and follow that procedure in order to install the USB Comm port driver in the first place.

It usually isn't necessary to follow that re-boot procedure in order to change the COMM port number or to delete the com port. However, if this is the first time installing the USB device, then it is definitely necessary to follow the re-boot procedure "Install Dinex Drivers into Windows 8.doc". Then continue with this procedure.

How to do it? First, plug in the plug-and-pray device to a USB port on the computer. The computer should make some kind of tone, if the sound device is working and the sound volume isn't muted.

Find the pop up menu off the right edge of the screen, select Settings, and then find click on "Control Panel".

In the "Adjust your computer settings" pop-up window, select "Hardware And Sound".

Right click on the device in question, in the example shown the device it a Dinex T2-MK-232 USB To Serial Interface.

If this is the first time installing the device, the information screen will be mostly blank. Click on the "Hardware" tab.

Click on "Properties".

Click on "Driver".

Click "Update Driver".

Browse to find the install files, probably on the CD-ROM that came with the USB device.

Then Click "Next". With any luck, the computer will install the driver for the USB device. The following procedure will show how to change the COM port number on the USB device.

My How To Install USB Drivers into Windows 8 Part 1

When installing a hardware device driver into Window 8.1 or the old 2012 Windows 8, some items require that a Setup.exe program should run before the device is plugged in. Generally those will work OK with Windows 8 as-is.

Another type of hardware device driver is a plug-and-pray device where it is necessary to plug the device in to a USB port, and then allow Windows 8 to install a driver automatically.

In order to install plug-and-pray device drivers for an external USB hardware device such as the T2-MK-USB or the G3-MK-CAN, it is necessary to temporarily change the Windows 8 "Install Unsigned Driver" settings. These changes will last until the next reboot, and then the regular PC settings will go back to normal.
How to do it? Find the pop up menu off the right edge of the screen, select Settings, and then find "Change PC Settings" way down at the bottom. Click on "Change PC Settings".

In the "Change PC Settings" pop-up window, select "General".

Scroll all the way down to the bottom to find Advanced Startup. This can be difficult because the pop up menu off the right edge of the screen will cover up the vertical scroll bar. Keep trying until you can scroll all the way down, then click on Restart Now.

Then, wait while the computer reboots.

Keep waiting.

Wait until the computer reboots, then select Troubleshoot.

Select Advanced Options.




Select Startup Settings.

Nothing to do here except to click "Restart".

Finally arriving at the key point in this procedure, press the "F7" key on the keyboard. Chances are that the F keys are located across the top of the keyboard. These F keys are seldom used.

(Finger is pointing towards F7 key on the QWERTY keyboard)

Wait until the computer boots up, then plug in the plug-and-pray device. At this point, the Windows 8 computer will accept the old hardware driver from Windows XP or Windows 7.
For further instructions, see
Windows 8.1 Part 2 of this procedure    or    Windows 8 Part 2 of this procedure.

fin