Interfacing a PC with last year's Robot Controller

[punarhero]

Hi all,
On this project that our team is working on to build a robot for a museum, we have connected a PC onboard with the RC from last year, running PBASIC, through the program port on the RC. Sean from Team 116 wrote a program for us that runs on the computer, which looks for serial data from the RC, and plays a track according. I have the following code:

IF picturedetected THEN
SEROUT 16, N19200, [picnumber]
ENDIF

The program on the computer looks for the pic number and plays a track corressponding to the pic number.

However, it is not working!!! As soon as I start runniing the porgram on the comp, the controller gives me a BasicRunError.
Has anyone ever interfaced a PC with a Robot Controller before. If so, please help us because we are in a serious crunch.
Thanks a lot

[seanwitte]

The host program running on the PC uses the MSCOMM control from a VB 6.0 GUI. Punardeep says that the RC crashes with a Basic Run Error whenever the serial port on the PC is open.

I tested the program with a BS2 and it works correctly. The only caveat is that whenever the serial port is initially opened on the PC is resets the stamp by asserting the reset pin. Is there a modification to the reset circuit that would cause the problem hes having?

[seanwitte]

In order to open a serial connection with a 2003 RC using the MSCOMM control you need to set the DTREnable property to false before you open the port. With a regular basic stamp you get a reset when the port opens, but the RC goes into a permanent error state. The documentation claims that the default value for the DTREnable property is false, but that is incorrect.