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   Procomm works on my computer but Telepathy doesn't.  Why?

   This often happens when you have two serial ports in the computer,
   both set to the same I/O address or IRQ number.  It can also happen
   if the port is set to the wrong IRQ number.  I don't really know why
   Procomm can work with those problems, but there you are.

   To check for two ports on the same address, try some utility like
   Microsoft's MSD (distributed with Windows) or Norton's System Info
   that reports the number of serial ports in the computer.  Then take
   out the serial port you're using and run MSD or SI again.  If it
   still reports the same number of ports, there is another one in the
   computer at the same address.  Remember that some motherboards have
   built-in serial ports that need to be disabled in the BIOS setup if
   you're not going to use them.

   To check for IRQ number problems, you'll probably have to go through
   all the cards in the computer and check their documentation.  (You do
   have documentation, don't you?)  Network and sound cards often use
   the same IRQ numbers as serial ports.  You can have two serial ports
   set to the same IRQ as long as you don't want to use both at once,
   but you can't have a serial port on the same IRQ as any other kind of
   card.

   A quick check for this kind of problem is to pull out every card that
   you don't absolutely need to operate the computer, then see if the
   serial port works.  If it does, you have a conflict with something in
   the stack of cards you pulled out.  This test doesn't help with
   things like built-in ports on the motherboard, though.