[obiwon]

We have two older machines, 1994 VF2 and a 2001 MINIMILL, that we use an RS232 cable to transfer programs. We use Visual Basic Terminal on the PC for this. Recently the programs sent to the MINIMILL have had a lot of bad characters, some in parenthesis, some not. No problems with the VF2, so I switched cables but that didn't help. RS232 settings on both machines are the same ..Baud rate 9600...Parity even... stop bits 1... xon xoff... data bits 8. This has worked for years, but suddenly not so well. Any thoughts?
Thanks, Andy

[dcoupar]

Are you using a USB to Serial adapter? Did anything change (new PC, etc.)?

I've had issues like this with USB to Serial adapters in the past. I was able to solve it by going into the Advanced tab in Ports in Device Manager and turning down the FIFO buffers and unchecking them... just a thought.

[obiwon]

After running some tests we found that the serial ports on the machine were bad. Ordered a replacement today, will install it tomorrow and see if that helps.

[obiwon]

That fixed it.