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I am trying to learn the maximum number of serial ports that can be configured on Windows 7. Any information on this will be greatly appreciated. I'm having trouble finding this.
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I am trying to learn the maximum number of serial ports that can be configured on Windows 7. Any information on this will be greatly appreciated. I'm having trouble finding this.
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Windows 6.0+ support 256 Communications Port devices.
Thank you for the information. That's more than we'll need. Where did you get this information? I will need a reference in my documentation. – None – 2012-10-30T17:36:56.713
Honestly I don't know where or if MS has this documented. It's a definitely the current limit however. – Chris S – 2012-10-30T19:27:08.140
Windows has supported 256 ports since Windows 95, at least according to the API documentation. – John Gardeniers – 2012-10-30T19:31:06.633
@JohnGardeniers I think that's only for 32-bit apps; IIRC 16-bit are limited to 9... Do you have a link to something official looking? I couldn't find anything. – Chris S – 2012-10-30T20:53:13.423
You may be right. I don't have any references to hand but recall that I looked up the information when I was writing a comms program for Win95, which was obviously a few years ago. – John Gardeniers – 2012-10-30T23:08:06.260
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The maximum number of COM and LPT ports that Windows NT supports is 256. This is a limitation in Control Panel and does not represent a limitation of the hardware platform. In both Intel x86 and MIPS machines, the number of COM and LPT ports is only limited by available interrupts, I/O addresses and, ultimately, 4,294,967,295 (32 bits).
This link from Microsoft.com explains it well:
1Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link(s), as the answer can become invalid if the linked page(s) change. – DavidPostill – 2016-12-11T12:51:44.623
How many do you really need? – Zoredache – 2012-10-30T17:05:24.977
We need to connect around 80 devices. – None – 2012-10-30T17:26:07.053
What kind of devices? Perhaps RS485 would be a better alternative. – Chris S – 2012-10-30T17:27:03.987
Unfortunately I am locked in to RS-232 due to hardware limitations. We are planning to proxy the serial port via Ethernet using third-party hardware. We are in the planning stages and I couldn't find the maximum number of ports I could configure. – None – 2012-10-30T17:32:26.493