At my university, i''m in a project were we''ll be making a piece of hardware communicating thourgh either the com port or a usb port. I''m just wondering which one is easier to program. Any links to documentation (tutorials, eh?) would be very appreciated. thanks, john

The Com ports (RS232) are more documented, and thus probably better to program with if they can meet your requirments (spec).

,Jay

By comm I assume you''re talking about the serial ports (they''re usually of the 9 pin variaty these days). Serial is much easier than usb. With usb you''ll have to write your own set of drivers for the device, not to mention the difficulty in having your device actually send/recieve through usb. Serial is as simple as sending out bytes one at a time through the port, (In win32 you can even specifiy "COM1"/"COM2" as a file name for CreateFile and read/write without hassle).

For info try this (2nd link from google, using search term "RS232") RS232 Tutorial and diagrams