App to communicate with external device via serial port:

[The Thing]

Hi folks,

At work I use one of these instruments which connects to a PC via the serial port. The software used to communicate with the device is a 16 bit DOS application and is a pain to use so I am hoping that I might be able to develop a simple tool in Visual C# that would replace it.
The data received from the device is in *.csv format which I can then open in Excel, additionally through the software I can issue commands to delete the readings from the device, upload ID's to it, etc.

For starters is there a way to programmatically "discover" the device's settings that it uses to communicate with the PC. By settings I mean things like the baud rate, parity, the number of data bits, the number of stop bits, etc, as I do not know these things as of yet. I'd be grateful for any help or advice that you might have to pass on.

Thanks, and have a happy Christmas.

[AIS4U]

The Thing:

Check out these Web sites.
I think they will get you started in the right direction.

http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~arik/schematics.html

http://www.tkk.fi/Misc/Electronics/c.../lptpower.html

http://www.hobbyengineering.com/SectionIN.html

http://www.boondog.com/

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/par/doc/data.html

Good Luck