Ascii debug issues?

[achilles03]

I had a program that communicated via RS232 to my PC pretty well, but I lost it in a hard drive transfer and can't get a new program to work exactly right.

The program I have has the following serout2 command repeated in a loop:

serout2 portb.2,396,["TACOS"]

On my terminal program, all I get is something like:
"aeU aeU aeU aeU aeU"

(the a is actually a Greek alpha)

I've also tried (with somewhat similar results as above):
serout2 portb.2,396,[DEC 84,65,67,79,115,33,13]

I have the terminal program set to recieve at 2400, true, non-inverted, 8-bit and 1 stop bit. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance for any help!
Dave

[mister_e]

what about the osc speed? if different than 4MHZ, did you use the DEFINE OSC ???

[achilles03]

Yeah, I set it to 4Mhz.

[milestag]

I am suffering a similar problem here with a PIC18F2525. I know the MAX232 interface is fine, as it works perfect for bootloading. And I can get HSEROUT to work fine, but when I try to use SEROUT I get wierd characters on hyperterminal.

I am runnig at 8MHz with a ceramic resonator (yes I use DEFINE OSC 8) and using 9600 baud.

I'm wondering if it's a timing issue with software vs hardware generated serial data. I still need to try generating from other pins. Possible that the USART is still doing something to the TX pin due to the bootloader having configured it. Still troubleshooting ....

[Bruce]

Are you using TRUE mode with SEROUT?

Going through the MAX232 you'll need to use TRUE mode. With a direct connection to the PC, you would use inverted.

[mister_e]

In addition to Bruce, what about the config fuses? HS OSC or XT OSC???