I noted one thing in all this. You changed the serial cable from the
motherboard to the case.

There are two kinds of serial cables for the motherboard. One is wired in
the DB-9 connector as

12345
6789

The other

13579
2468

It is possible (and probable by Murphy's law) that you put on the wrong type
of cable so that the port is no longer set up as serial correctly. It seems
to me that when fixing something, one solves the original problem but
unknowingly cause secondary problems that drag out a problem turning it into
a challenge of your patience and not your skills..

If you have any patience left, find the original cable and try it again. As
a visual check, if you can compare the two cables by pulling back the black
plastic shield over the wires and see how they are wired. It is visually
quite easy to see the above mentioned patterns of wiring. I would do this in
case as you said the original is defective. If you have any more spare DB-9
connectors, check them out til you get the right one.

Other thoughts:

1) Is there two serial ports on the machine. If so, use the other. it is
probably a DB-25 connector, try a DB-9 on it. Oh, the DB-25 can be wired
differently too so don't mix up your DB-25 with others. Mark it or loop a
gentle knot in it to identify it as the one from the system. That's what I
do when playing with old systems.
2) Are the serial ports enabled in the BIOS correctly. Com1 IRQ4 3F8, Com2
IRQ3 2F8?
3) Do you have Norton Utilities DOS 7 or 8 or first Win95 version. There
is NDIAGS that tests serial ports with a loopback plug. A DB-9 loopback
plug is easy to wire up if you have a DB-9 connector. I can send the
pinout. I use Norton with my own loopback plugs to test serial ports and
printer ports.

"byteryder" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 16:43:56 -0500, philo
Just bought a REAl serial mouse and installed the drivers.... Windows
boots and comes up with a message saying there is no mouse attached.

I then deleted the mouse in the controll panel\system\deviices (?) and
reinstalled the driver for that mouse etc. ...... same problem. The
time I'm killin tryin to fix his computer... I might be cheaper to buy
him another one :-)

ANY ideas would be appreciated