Isn't serial port work fun?!! You can't use a debugger, since the debugger uses the serial port.
Note that if you use a serial debugger connection, the serial port is tied up until you reset the device. Same deal if your program opens the serial port and exits without closing it. A soft reset usually clears up serial port tieups. I've been known to do a hard reset every few days to get out of persistent glitches. Don't keep anything important on your testing device, or at least keep a current hotsync. The best you can do is to check every return code, and issue progress messages as the code proceeds. If there is any error on the serial port, all further communications can be locked up until you clear the error. The OS/5 devices seem to be much more picky about this than the earlier ones. Use SrmClearErr on any hint that there is a problem. And don't use SrmSetWakeupHandler - it doesn't work. The company that provides the Portabella program that you mentioned sells a variety of serial port widgets. They probably offer a RS232 adapter with LED readouts of the various signals. Another device that you might consider is an opto-isolator. It can be used to clean up any non-standard signal levels that the sensor (or the Palm) is producing. You could use a third device to monitor the communications. Another PC or Palm could be tapped into the connection. An oscilloscope is ok for check signal presence and levels, but I'd hate to decode a long message from a scope trace. -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
