My brain has turned to mush over this one.

I was in the process of writing a lengthy post showing my code and what I've tried but just erased it because it started sounding ridiculous.

I'm reading data from the serialport and everything is fine -- the data received event triggers the serialport1.read and I'm writing the data into an array which I then look for "this and that".

What I want to do is also try to add a "connected" and "disconnected" label to the program in case someone pulls the wire to the PC.

So, long story short, I know I can probably use serialport1.cdholding (the carrier detect pin) and sample it for on/off.

The problem is that it starts to get very confusing because I need to have 2 serial port procedures set up and both would require open and close (which would cause a conflict).

So, I tried a "serial" approach to it --
(1) sense the CD pin and then if true
(2) read the data

But after writing a dozen different attempts I couldn't get that to work either.

Any push in the right direction would be appreciated -- it's been a couple of months away from writing code so I'm rusty to say the least.

And there you go -- I wrote ANOTHER lengthy post !