[wasyoungonce (Brendan)]

Ok, tried a MAX232 interface with transceiver...no go. Tried another laptop (win7) with inbuilt Bluetooth..same things as before.

The transceiver appears to be broadcasting itself and this is recognised buy laptop(s). The Bluetooth dongle (on the 1st laptop) appears to be working as it recognises itself and adds it self as a bluetooth device.

I can set the bluetooth ports or let the software set it's own ports..ie: port 11 incoming and 12 outgoing... or what ever ports I want to set.

When I try to connect the Gemini ASCOM auto detects ports (I can turn this off with no change) and some strange number COM numbers appear in the COM port selection box..ie: COM11c or COM12c..or COMo12 or COM120...something like that.

If I manually edit this to the correct port...aka I enter COM12 ..I get a pop up message "The following settings are invalid: "COM" port" even prior to me trying to press the "Gemini ASCOM connect" tab.... for it to connect the driver to the port.

If I try to connect to these "odd COM ports", it just sits for awhile then "cannot connect to Gemini COM port does not exist"!

So all in all it's not working. The Win7 lappy scans the COM ports and tries to connect with these (as part of the Auto detect Gemini ASCOM driver) and this throws up odd COM ports numbers..some with Chinese characters.

So at this stage I believe the devices are working but I cannot get them talking to each other.

One thing Bob, I didn't ask,did you use virtual COM port drivers?