Please explain this QBASIC code to me and tell me how to implement in VB.NET

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Hi, I have a steel frond cash drawer connected to my com port. I need to create a small program in VB.NET to open the drawer. The drawer's manual has some code and I don't understand a single line of it. The code is as follows, it says that the code is in QBASIC:

OPEN "COM1:300,N,8,1"
FOR RANDOM AS #1
PRINT #1, "0000000000"

I need to implement the open functionality via VB.NET. Please help

Out of curiosity: What is QBasic? Never heard of it.

Posted 1-Jun-11 15:42pm

obhasha07

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Mathew Crothers · Answer 1 · 2011-06-01T16:36:00

Solution 1

Start by looking at reference and examples here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.ports.serialport.aspx[^].

You need to open a com port with 300baud, no parity, 8 data bits and 1 stop bit.

After that you can create a stream to write and read from the serial port.

Posted 1-Jun-11 16:36pm

Mathew Crothers

Comments

thatraja 1-Jun-11 22:42pm

Yep, 5!

obhasha07 1-Jun-11 22:57pm

"You need to open a com port with 300baud, no parity, 8 data bits and 1 stop bit.". OK that explains the first line of QBasic. But what does
FOR RANDOM AS #1
PRINT #1, "0000000000"

those two lines mean? I think the first one should be a for loop to create a random number. Also, where sould I call these commands? Is it in the SerialPort.Write() method?

Mathew Crothers 1-Jun-11 23:07pm

In QBasic opening a stream started with an OPEN command then finished with a FOR (type) and a file number.

So FOR RANDOM AS #1 means open the com port for RANDOM access and assign it the file handle #1

PRINT #1, "0000000000" just means write "0000000000" to the file handle #1.