T60 with Centrino Duo and XP - Serial comm problem

Hi,

As you know this laptop does not come with serial port and I need it to communicate with a device at work which doesn't support anything else. Our customers have reported issues with serial communication between T60 and our device. and I have to replicate the issue.

I am using Socket I/O serial card. Problem is that the communication stops abruptly. There have never been any issue with our device, socket I/O card, the software etc, until T60.

Question is: 1) Can we shut off one of the cores (our customer reported that this helps) ?

2) Has anyone had any problem with serial comm, or everyone just uses USB.

 

So guess what, I did turn of the second core, and since then my program is working flawlessly.

The software uses multi-threading to pass events between objects and this could be affected by some threads running on one core and others on second core.

Any ideas ?

 

How did you turn off the second core exactly?

Also what kind of device is this? Is it a serial adapter that fits in the pcmcia slot?

I've used usb/serial converters with not much problem. Keyspan adapters in particular I know to be good. This is in XP of course, Vista I couldn't get drivers working.

 

I disabled the second core in BIOS. Under CPU, there is setting called Core Multi-Processing, which can be enabled (dual core) or disabled (single core).

Yes, I use Socket's Serial I/O PC Card. This card has reliably worked with older laptops. It's only T60's that it is having problem with. But with Core Multi-Processing disabled in BIOS, again it works without any problem.

So, I am thinking it is Windows problem than Intel's.