On Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 10:32:05 AM UTC-7, M Philbrook wrote:
> if Bios has control of it, it simply flips a bit
> in a device manager chip on the board.
OK, that would be in evidence when the Bios interface
allows disabling.
> From that point, the OS does not see that serial port.
There must be a customary way for the OS to read the state
of the bit. Otherwise communication software would have
to allow for obscure hardware variations. Can software
flip the bit? Ie. can a port can be enabled and disabled
when the system is running?
> USB serial ports are a different story.
Fortunately I'm only interested in RS-232 style serial ports,
for now at least.
Thanks! ... Peter E.