Printing with Additional COM Ports (82947)

SUMMARY

Below are instructions (Methods A-C) on how to get your printer to work with serial ports above COM3.

Before you begin, check the following:

For OS/2 versions other than MS OS/2 1.30.1, make sure you are not using the IBMNULL driver. The IBMNULL driver works only for ports up to COM3. To use any port above COM3, use a driver that comes with the printer. For example, if you are using the HP LaserJet printer, use HPLASERJET.DRV.
When LAN Manager is installed, it installs 9 serial and 9 parallel ports. Information regarding this is stored in the OS2SYS.INI file. By default, all the COM ports have the following settings:
Baud Rate: 1200
Word Length: 7
Parity: Odd
Stop Bits: 1
Handshake: None
Set your printer to the above settings and see if it prints correctly.

Control Panel allows you to change the settings of the COM ports (but only up to COM3).

Note: Sometimes the OS2SYS.INI file gets corrupted. When this file gets corrupted, you cannot change the COM port settings. To correct this, follow Method C (below) to create a new OS2SYS.INI file.

MORE INFORMATION

Method A

More information on this topic may be available from Microsoft Information Services. Microsoft Information Services are available on the World Wide Web by connecting to http://www.microsoft.com. The FTP site is located at ftp.microsoft.com.

Method B

Use the INIEDIT utility to change the COM port settings as described below:

Run the INIEDIT utility that comes with the OS/2 Programmer's Toolkit (PTK).
Double-click the PM_SPOOLER_PORT application.
Double-click the port whose settings you want to modify, then change the proper key value.
Exit the INIEDIT utility.

Method C

Warning: When you use this method, the changes that were made (such as creating different OS/2 groups, changing the colors, and so forth) will be lost. If you are running local security, disable it before making any of these changes. Also make sure that you remove the ACLs on the directories that contain the original OS2SYS.INI file (C:\OS2) and the new OS2SYS.INI file (C:\) on HPFS386 machines.

From the OS/2 install disk, use the following command to expand the file INISYS.RC@ to the C:\ directory:
```
      UNPACK inisys.rc@ c:\ 
```
Using a text editor, edit the INISYS.RC file. (Note that by default no COM port definition exists.) Insert the COM port definition lines in the following format, immediately after the definitions for LPT1 through LPT3. Insert as many of these lines as there are COM ports to define. The format is
```
      "PM_SPOOLER_PORT"  "COMx;9600;0;1;0;"
						
```
where x is the number of the port being defined.

Note: The PM_SPOOLER_PORT and COM must be in uppercase letters.
Save this INISYS.RC file as a text file, then run the following command:
```
      MAKEINI OS2SYS.INI INISYS.RC
						
```
This creates the OS2SYS.INI file in the C:\ directory.
Because OS/2 uses the OS2SYS.INI file when you boot off the hard disk, boot from a floppy disk to update this file. As a precautionary measure, it is advisable at this time to copy the current OS2SYS.INI file from the C:\OS2 directory to some other directory or a floppy disk. Then copy the newly created OS2SYS.INI file from C:\ to the C:\OS2 directory.
Restart your machine.
Re-create the print queues and make any other system changes that were lost in this exercise.