Do you have to have a serial port on the laptop? Many newer
laptops/notebooks no longer supply a serial port. One solution you may
consider if you get stuck is a USB to serial converter. There are so
many of them out there. A few of them are junk. One that I have found
to work is the Belkin F5U109. I am even able to get it to work with
MS-DOS applications that run in a window in WinXP. The drivers allow
you to select a different COM port in the setup.

Mike McWhinney