I got a compaq armada 1750 with windows 98 that was given to me from work. The serial port was working when it was used at work, but it won't work with my cable. I ahve shut down the IR port, the modem, the mouse port, and the keyboard port. Still doesn't work. I can take the cable inside my house and hook it to my new Dell desktop, and the cable passes the aldl test without a hitch, so I know the cable is good. I have never had so much trouble with a computer in my life. This laptop either sucks or I'm overlooking something simple. I'm about to toss it in the garbage.

have you verified all the port settings in Windows? Compare them to the settings for the port on your desktop.

Not sure of the exact model, but I used to have an older (98-99) Compaq laptop that for whatever reason would not work with LS1 edit. (wouldn't read or write)

Two guys in my car club are running Compaq Armada laptops, one of them is a 1700 I know. Not sure about the other but it's almost identical to the first.

Have you checked the BIOS? It may be turned off in there.

Yeah, my HP 1 Gig laptop nearly locks up on me when I try and download Windows Service Pack 1. Works fine up to that point. I can't figure it out.

The com port is turned on in bios.

I have 2 laptops (One Latitude XPi, and 1 IBM Thinkpad 600E) that won't work for datalogging. I have yet to figure it out too -the serial ports work fine, the cables (both, I bought another thinking maybe the cable was bad) check out OK, and work perfectly from my Home PC using a 50' serial extension.
I even bought a serial PCMCIA card thinking maybe the dedicated port would be the fix. Nada.
I've disabled everything I could that might use a port, there are no IRQ conflicts, and the BIOS have the ports properly setup for both notebooks.

I gave up and am selling 1 of the 2 I had bought. I'll sure be watching this thread to see if you get any answers that work, so post back if you ever figure it out!

I have a 2.4Ghz HP laptop, and also am having trouble connecting. I have AKM cables, Tunercats, and a belkin AND a keyspan rs232 to serial converters and I still can't read.... what gives YO.

Jonota

I've had a simialr experience with my Gateway PII w/W98. I could never get it to work with Win ALDL for my OBDI truck. I purhcased multiple cables and had computer geeks check everything, but no dice. I gave up. I thought I was the only one with this problem.