listening to comm traffic

phwashington_at_attbi.com
Date: 09/28/05 

Date: 27 Sep 2005 16:42:14 -0700

We have 2 Windows computers which are connected to 2 measuring devices
via comm ports. System #1 went down last week because of a harddrive
failure. We reinstalled windows and reinstalled/upgraded the drivers
for the measurement equipment, but we are still getting some
communication errors. ( I haven't seen the errors, but the technicians
working on the machine says it is indicative of a communication error).
I have heard of, but never have tried, tapping a comm communication and
was wondering if it would be possible to tap the communication with a
linux computer and see if we can actually see a problem.
I was thinking if we don't see a specific problem with the
communication on System #1, then can tap System #2 and see if the same
information is traveling on the communication port when a requested
action is made. [Basically from what I know right now they are sending
a request to the measurement equipment, asking a filter wheel to rotate
to a new filter and on System1 it's not doing it correctly. They're
not getting a pop up error message, they're just seeing that the system
is rotating the wrong filter into place].
Any help, suggested Howto's, reading materials would be greatly
appreciated? I've basically been wanting to know how to do this and
understand serial communications anyway, we had a similar situation
with an unrelated piece of equipment a few months ago (luckily we had
another computer configured correctly which worked).

The company that sold us the measurement equipment layed off all of
their technical support personell, the sales rep told us to just
install the latest drivers and it should work.

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