Question : RS-485 Serial Communications

I'm trying to communicate with a digital board via RS-485.  I can talk to it via RS-422 and RS-232, however, when I try to talk via RS-485, I can not read.  I have a thread running that monitors the port for a character received, using WaitCommEvent.  I saw a bug reported by Microsoft saying that the RTS_CONTROL_TOGGLE parameter in the DCB structure really didn't toggle and that you had to control RTS manually.  So I tried to use the EscapeCommFunction with the SETRTS parameter prior to the WriteFile and then use the CLRRTS parameter immediately after the WriteFile.  For some reason I can only write to the device and I never receive a response back.  I know the device is responding because I tapped into the wire and redirected the output.  There seems to be a timing problem with setting my computer to RTS and then clearing and reading what is coming back.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Code examples are definitely needed.

Answer : RS-485 Serial Communications

This could happen if you use the FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED while you open your port.

Take a look at the code to figure out how to wait:
The code was snipped from the TTY-com sample.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/devprods/vs6/visualc/vcsample/vcsmpserialsampleforcommunicationsdemonstration.htm

///----------- start

fWriteStat = WriteFile( idComDev, lpByte, dwBytesToWrite,
&dwBytesWritten, &osWrite)?true:false ;


// Note that normally the code will not execute the following
// because the driver caches write operations. Small I/O requests
// (up to several thousand bytes) will normally be accepted
// immediately and WriteFile will return true even though an
// overlapped operation was specified

if (!fWriteStat)
{
if(GetLastError() == ERROR_IO_PENDING)
{
                  // We should wait for the completion of the write operation
                  // so we know if it worked or not

                  // This is only one way to do this. It might be beneficial to
                  // the to place the writing operation in a separate thread
                  // so that blocking on completion will not negatively
                  // affect the responsiveness of the UI

                  // If the write takes long enough to complete, this
                  // function will timeout according to the
                  // CommTimeOuts.WriteTotalTimeoutConstant variable.
                  // At that time we can check for errors and then wait
                  // some more.

                  while(!GetOverlappedResult( idComDev,
                        &osWrite, &dwBytesWritten, TRUE ))
                  {
                        dwError = GetLastError();
                        if(dwError == ERROR_IO_INCOMPLETE)
                              // normal result if not finished
                              continue;
                        else
                        {
                              // an error occurred, try to recover
                              wsprintf( szError, "", dwError ) ;
                              //WriteTTYBlock( npTTYInfo , szError, lstrlen( szError ) ) ;
                              ClearCommError(idComDev, &error, &ComStat ) ;
                              if (error > 0)
                              {
                                    wsprintf( szError, "", error ) ;
                                    MessageBox(NULL,szError,"",MB_OK);
                              }
                              break;
                        }
                  }
            }
            else
            {                                           
                  // some other error occurred

                  ClearCommError(idComDev, &error, &ComStat ) ;
                  if((error & CE_BREAK) == CE_BREAK){
                        MessageBox(0,"The hardware detected a break condition.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_DNS) == CE_DNS){
                        MessageBox(0,"Windows 95 only: A parallel device is not selected.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_FRAME) == CE_FRAME){
                        MessageBox(0,"The hardware detected a framing error.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_IOE) == CE_IOE){
                        MessageBox(0,"An I/O error occurred during communications with the device.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_MODE) == CE_MODE){
                        MessageBox(0,"The requested mode is not supported, or the hFile parameter is invalid. If this value is specified, it is the only valid error.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_OOP) == CE_OOP){
                        MessageBox(0,"Windows 95 only: A parallel device signaled that it is out of paper.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_OVERRUN) == CE_OVERRUN){
                        MessageBox(0,"A character-buffer overrun has occurred. The next character is lost.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_PTO) == CE_PTO){
                        MessageBox(0,"Windows 95 only: A time-out occurred on a parallel device.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_RXOVER) == CE_RXOVER){
                        MessageBox(0,"An input buffer overflow has occurred. There is either no room in the input buffer, or a character was received after the end-of-file (EOF) character.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_RXPARITY) == CE_RXPARITY){
                        MessageBox(0,"The hardware detected a parity error.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  if((error & CE_TXFULL) == CE_TXFULL){
                        MessageBox(0,"The application tried to transmit a character, but the output buffer was full.","RS232",MB_OK);
                  }
                  return ( FALSE );
            }
      }
      return ( true ) ;