HW-group’s Hercules

Since Dominic / is doing some serial port troubleshooting today, I dug up a link to one of my favorite serial port troubleshooting tools: HW-group’s Hercules. This is made available ostensibly for use with their RS232 / network / remote serial port devices, but it works great for all manner of serial port work.

I’ve used this utility quite often in the past when testing out serial ports, USB to serial adapters, and various serial devices that I’ve made. I like it because it shows the status of things in virual LEDs and allows you to send arbitrary data, manually toggle DTS/RTS on and off, and just generally generate and receive serial data at will. It also has some nice built-in network features that allow one to virtually use a serial port across a network, and other features which are generally useful for those doing serial network stuff.

Here’s a quote from HW-group’s Hercules page which lists its basic features:

· All basic TCP and UDP utilities in one file, no installation required (just one .EXE file)
· Implemented Serial Port Terminal is working with the Virtual Serial Ports (COM12 for example). You can check and control all serial port lines (CTS, RTS, DTR, DSR, RI, CD)
· Simple TCP client (like the Hyperterminal) with the TEA support, view format, file transfers, macros..
· Easy to use TCP Server with the TEA support, view format, file transfers, macros..
· Hercules contains simple UDP/IP “Terminal” with view formats, echo, file transfers, macros..
· Support the NVT (Network Virtual Terminal) in the Test mode tab, as like as NVT debuging features..
· Using Telnet extended with NVT allows serial port configuration (RFC2217), device identification, confirmation of data sequence, etc.
· It’s FREEWARE you can use and share this software free – check the licence!