VCP drivers

Steve (or anyone else who might know the answer):

Can you explain a bit about loading/configuring the COM port drivers for use with VVP, using say N8VBvCOM as an example?

At the time of first installation, you obviously install the N8VBvCOM driver and configure it using the vCOMConfigurator utility. But what happens after that for subsequent uses?

Let’s say you enable just two pairs of VCP ports and use the driver to drive the Weatherlink program plus WD, for the sake of argument.

If I reboot the PC and load say VVP and the WL program then it just seems to work, ie I haven’t had to explicitly load the N8VBvCOM driver or the configurator. But if I look in Task Manager I can’t see any process that (at least obviously) maps to the N8VBvCOM driver. How is this working then? More specifically, I guess I’ve got three questions:

  1. What is causing the N8VBvCOM driver to be loaded after a reboot (and why isn’t it apparently visible as a process)?

  2. It looks like if I were to start VVP and WL using StartWatch then there’s no need at all to ‘manually’ start the N8VBvCOM driver, ie I can just forget about adding this component to the StartWatch list?

  3. I’m guessing that the only time that I need to re-run the Configurator is if I decide to change the VCP configuration at all?

John,

I’m sure someone will come along with a more in-depth explanation, but the driver is installed during the boot process and you’ll find it in your Device Manager under Multi-port serial adapters. No need to start it with StartWatch. When I’ve wanted to enable another port in VVP, I’ve just ticked it and then restarted the program. VVP takes care of the rest.

  • Jim