If you've ever dealt much with serial ports (especially modems), you know what a pain they can be. Well, here's some help. Serial is a free DOS utility that continuously shows the status of any of the serial ports on your computer. Running as a TSR, it uses just over 3500 bytes of RAM when loaded. Its display (which runs in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen by default) will show you, at a glance, pretty much anything you might need to know about your serial port to help you locate and diagnose problems. Several options can be accessed through command-line switches, and excellent documentation is included. Reviewed on Jul 23 1998.
