My old computer had a serial port that I could read 9600bps data exported from a 16F628 operating at 5V without a MAX232 chip. I installed a card with a parallel and serial port on my new computer to be able to interface with some legacy hardware, and when I try to read data from the same PIC, I don't get anything...

So my question is, was my old port operating with TTL as opposed to RS232? And is the new serial port I installed in my new computer operating with RS232? For reference, my old computer was XP, and my new computer has Vista.

Also, the CD with drivers has a bunch of subfolders and options... can I configure the serial port to be TTL as opposed to RS232?

Thanks in advance for any insight!
Dave