© National Instruments Corporation
5-1
GPIB-COM User Manual
Section Five
Programming the GPIB-COM
This section presents a description of the GPIB-COM Serial Port Emulator registers and
information on programming the GPIB-COM. You need to use this section only if you are
writing your own serial port device driver.
The GPIB-COM Registers
IBM's serial adapter is a plug-in card for the PC that handles RS-232 communication. The main
component of the adapter is an INS8250 Asynchronous Communications chip or its equivalent,
which is controlled by programming a set of registers on the I/O channel. The names of these
registers and their I/O addresses are given in Table 5-1. Each register is located at a certain offset
from the base address of the board. The addresses are given with an X for the first digit and a Y
for the second digit, where XY=3F for COM1 (base address 3F8), XY=2F for COM2 (base
address 2F8), XY=3E for COM3 (base address 3E8), and XY=2E for COM4 (base address
2E8). Notice that sometimes two registers share the same I/O address. The DLAB bit (bit 7 of
the Line Control Register) determines which register will respond when these addresses are
accessed.
Note: Throughout this section, the term set will be used to mean that a bit is a logical 1, and clear
will mean that the bit is a logical 0.
Table 5-1. GPIB-COM Registers
I/O Address
Offset from
Register
Type
XY=3F for COM1
Base Address
XY=2F for COM2
XY=3E for COM3
XY=2E for COM4
Transmitter Holding Register
write
XY8 (DLAB=0)
0
Receive Buffer Register
read
XY8 (DLAB=0)
0
Divisor Latch LSB Register
read/write
XY8 (DLAB=1)
0
Divisor Latch MSB Register
read/write
XY9 (DLAB=1)
1
Interrupt Enable Register
read/write
XY9 (DLAB=0)
1
Interrupt Identification Register
read
XYA
2
Line Control Register
read/write
XYB
3
Modem Control Register
read/write
XYC
4
Line Status Register
read
XYD
5
Modem Status Register
read
XYE
6
The following pages describe the functions of each register on the serial adapter and on the GPIB-
COM. For a more complete description of the serial adapter, refer to the IBM Options and
Adapters Manual.