Hyperterminal problem - can anyone help

[legrandefromage]

Problem:

My windows 7 laptop needs to talk to switches in BT exchanges via Hyperterminal. Windows 7 doesnt feature hyperterm so tried 'Tera Term Pro'

2am this morning in Manchester, laptop and USB to serial dongle just refused to work - it couldnt find the driver despite the driver CD being in the drive and saved to a desktop folder...

I was with a colleague so his 6 year old XP machine worked flawlessly.

Solution?

I guess I can make my laptop dual boot into XP - would this solve my problems - I dont want to be sitting crying in a Glasgow echange tomorrow night because lappy wont play ball!

Any help greatly appreciated - this is at the limits of my knowledge and quite stressful after 4 hours sleep.

Problem #2

How do I know this will work? Is there something in the house like a modem that I can use to test the software and connections?


and finally:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!


Googling found this:

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-7/windo ... rterminal/

 

[Magsy]

Use Putty : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgta ... nload.html

Why the USB serial? No native serial? Strange they'd give you (as a BT Engineer) no serial? USB is flaky for this stuff and some of those dongles are just not 7 compatible.

Usually the USB serial will appear with a high COM port, set that in putty as direct connection and away to go.

 

[Johnboy]

I've just installed a USB to serial on my Windows 7 laptop and although it's a bit basic I found a setup file on the CD which I manually clicked on, it didn't autorun. It assigned it to COM4.

I know we've got a work around to run Hyperterm on Windows 7 machines as well, I'm searching for the info now.

Sounds like you and me are in a similar business.

+1 for putty as well.

 

[legrandefromage]

Use Putty : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgta ... nload.html

Why the USB serial? No native serial? Strange they'd give you (as a BT Engineer) no serial? USB is flaky for this stuff and some of those dongles are just not 7 compatible.

Usually the USB serial will appear with a high COM port, set that in putty as direct connection and away to go.

I am a subcontractor. Its my own laptop so no serial port - just two USB sockets.

I am having a nervous breakdown whilst giving myself a crash course in 'making stuff work without resorting to a hammer'.

 

[legrandefromage]

'Things' are moving on - USB to serial is now installed on COM3 (a USB port on the side of my Tosh) and Putty is in dialog with my SKY router - if I actually knew any engineer stuff to tell my router I'm sure it would be working right now.

 

[Johnboy]

LGF, if you want Hyperterm for Windows 7, can you pm me your email address. I can't pm the files to you from here, it wont allow it.

 

[JeRkY]

We used to run terminal type applications on a windows 7 ( or was it vista??) laptop by running in XP compatibility mode. USB to serial was another area that caused us a lot of problems. In the end I think it was dependant on what chip the converter used as to whether or not the connection to our serial devices would work.

It was all some time ago now and I cant remember specifics, however it is something I shall be revisiting soon in a new project.

 

[stewlewis]

Hypertrm still runs under Win7.

You can DL it here: http://files.digitizor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/hyperterminal1.zip

Run it and enter the phone location etc.
Enter a name for the connection, eg console, this is just a name for the settings.

In CONNECT USING choose COM3 (the port allocated to your USB>Serial)
Port settings, for a console usually 9600,8,none,1

Hit return with the cable in and you should get a prompt. If you do as you say from your Sky box thats about it. Sorted.

You may want to plug the USB>Serial into each USB port to make sure driver are not requested again should you need to swap USB ports.

 

[highlandsflyer]

You could run virtual XP in W7.

Though to be honest, I doubt the USB side of things would be less problematic. I couldn't get some of my studio gear working in W7 back before they had brought out W7 drivers and had problems with virtual XP so ended up running a dual boot.

Why not just shove an XP install on a wee partition if needs be?

 

[legrandefromage]

All sorted during training today. Managed to get the laptop to login to the switches and reboot etc.

Thanks for all the assistance!

New job starts tonight.