Serial comm. in Windows 95

[Peter Åstrand]

I need to communicate with a modem from Windows 95 (Swedish version). I've 
tried every package I can find, but without any luck:


1) In Windows NT, it's possible to do os.open("com2:"). For some reason,
this does not work in Windows 95: Sometimes I get "no such file or
directory". (It seems like this happens when cwd is a long directory.)
Sometimes the open succeeds and I can do os.writes(), but os.read() always
hangs without returning any data.


2) When trying Mark Hammonds "Win32 extensions", the import of win32file 
always fails. On one machine we have, the error is:

ImportError: DLL load failed: En enhet som är ansluten till datorn
fungerar inte. 

The last sentence is in Swedish. It means "A device connected to the 
computer does not work". 

On another machine, the import fails with an error saying that one 
required DLL file is missing. (It does not say which one.)

I've tried both win32all-148 and win32all-150, with Python 2.2.2. I have 
installed all required packages listed on 
http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePython/system_requirements.plex. 


3) pyserial and USPP (http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/) is based on
win32file (se above)


4) win32comm: I cannot find this package any longer. Some postings are
referring to http://www.uconect.net/wheineman/python/win32comm.zip, but
this host does not respond.


5) Sio Module (http://starship.python.net/crew/roger/). The version for
Python 2.2 is corrupt. The web page says the .EXE file should be 170,601
bytes, but after downloading the file, it is 171,184 bytes and package
refuses to install. Also, I'm not entirely happy with the commercial DLLs
included in this package. 


I'm running out of ideas... I really need to get this to work on Windows
95, so upgrading Windows is not an option.


-- 
Peter Åstrand                Telephone: +46-13-21 46 00
Cendio Systems               E-mail: peter at cendio.se
Teknikringen 3
583 30 Linköping