RS232 Debug Interface

Serial Data Capture with Microsoft Excel 97 on Windows 95/98/ME/NT
 

Table of Contents [Toc]

Concept
   Supported Operating Systems
Available resources
 

Concept   [Toc] [Top]

This Excel Worksheet has been designed to easily visualize and debug data received on the serial port (RS232).

The Worksheet activates a Visual Basic macro, which opens the specified RS232 ComPort and reads data in an endless loop. The received data bytes are converted to ASCII characters and to their binary, hexadecimal and decimal representations. The interruption of the endless loop is done by pushing the 'Esc' button.

The software has been successfully tested under Windows 95/98 and Excel 97 on a Pentium III 500 MHz and an Athlon 700 MHz system.
 

Supported Operating Systems   [Toc] [Top]

According to the DLL author: Win95, Win98, WinMe, WinNT

Unfortunately, it does not run on WinXP
The RS232 driver DLL (RSAPI_70.DLL) can not successfully open the ComPort on WinXP (although it is designed to run also on Win NT). I tried hard, but this DLL does not succeed on WinXP. If someone knows/is able to write a nice RS232 DLL running also on WinXP, I would be very graceful - and I assume a lot of other people too...

But recently, I obtained a different version of the RSAPI.DLL for WinXP, which you can download and try yourself. I've named it RSAPI_71.DLL, you can rename it to RSAPI_70.DLL and install it in your WinXP C:\WINDOWS\system32\ directory. The Visual Basic sources refer currently to the name RSAPI_70.DLL, but you can change this, if desired.

I haven't had enough free resources to test it thoroughly so far...
 

Available Resources   [Toc] [Top]

Last updated: 08.11.2005