Bogus TimeoutException reading .NETCF SerialPort

Question

EDIT: Was a hardware problem.....getting a duplicate device or cable seemed to solve the problem.

Hello, I am pulling my hair out trying to read a large quantity of data (~1MB) from a serial port in .NETCF.

I'm reading a dump of GPS data, but I am randomly receiving a TimeoutException on the call to m_serial.Read(..)

There is definitely data streaming in on the serial port -- the dump takes a couple minutes. When I get the timeout, I can just plug the serial cable into a different computer and see the data streaming steadily by.

I've tried implementing this several different ways -- SerialPort.Read, SerialPort.ReadLine, SerialPort.ReadExisting -- and they all will read for a short time (random amount) and then fail with a TimeoutException.

Any help would be very much appreciated, thank you! I'm basically at a loss as how I'm getting a timeout when there is certainly data available, streaming at 38400 baud

//m_serial is a SerialPort object, ReadTimeout set to 9000

                    string eoftest = "\r\n$PSRF206";
                    byte[] bEOFTest = ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(eoftest);

                    int bufferSize = 1024 * 16;
                    byte[] buffer = new byte[bufferSize];
                    int testingIndex = 0;

                    while (testingIndex < bEOFTest.Length)
                    {
                        int count = m_serial.Read(buffer, 0, bufferSize);

                        if (count > 0)
                        {
                            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
                            {
                                if (buffer[i] == bEOFTest[testingIndex])
                                {
                                    testingIndex++;
                                    if (testingIndex >= bEOFTest.Length)
                                        break;
                                }
                                else
                                    testingIndex = 0;
                            }

                            writer.Write(buffer, 0, count);
                        }
                  }

UPDATE:

I've discovered that the code runs fine on a Motorola Symbol device, but not on an intermec device that I have. I've swapped out all the hardware to try and eliminate that as a possibility, and it still doesn't work.

Both devices are Windows Mobile 5.0

Answer 1

As a suggestion you could always try using the OpenNETCF serial port library. It's interface compatible and that way you have all of the source down to the device manager calls, so you can see why any errors might be thrown.

Answer 2

Just great....looks like it was a hardware problem....I got some other devices available now and it's working fine.....