I have gotten my kit out after a year or so and now have a Windows 8.1 tablet instead of an old Dell, that was running Vista. I have downloaded everything again and confirmed that the COM port in Device Manager matches the COM port in my makefile. With that confirmed, I even changed it from the default of COM3, to COM4 in both locations, and I still get the following error:

"avrdude -c avr109 -p m168 -b 115200 -P COM4 -U flash:w:tempsensor.hex:a avrdud: ser_open(): can't open device "\.COM4": The system cannot find the file specified."

NOTE: The post preview shows the two back slashes, the period and then another backslash before the COM4 as being lost.

Not sure what file is being referenced. In the original documentation, it indicates this fault is due to a COM port issue, but not sure what that could be. Here is the line in the make file:

"AVRDUDEFLAGS=-c avr109 -p m168 -b 115200 -P COM4"

When I look at the device manager, it says the driver is up to date. The port settings were set to 9600 bits per second, but changing that to 115200 didn't make any difference. There is an error message in the general tab of the device properties that says:

"This device cannot start. (Code 10)

A device which does not exist was specified."

I have no clue what to do next.

There might be some info for you in this thread here on Nerdkits.

Windows 8 and the Prolific USB to Serial Adapter

Search the site for the above..

Jim

Thanks. I have joined into that forum at "NerdKits » Forums » Support Forum » Windows 8 and the Prolific USB to Serial Adapter"

"This device cannot start. (Code 10)

This error means windows could not start the driver software for that port, as I understand it. This usually is because that driver is the wrong one, is conflicting with another driver, or it has corrupted.

You might try deleting the device out of the device manager and then telling it to rescan so it will install new drivers (it should do this for something as common as a serial port). Or remove and reinstall your prolific drivers.

BM