A USB port can be assigned as a COM port by buying and plugging in a cable known as, a serial to USB cable. A Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, is a reasonably modern addition to most computers, smartphones and games consoles. This is a universal standard addition to these pieces of technology that allows many other pieces of technology to be synced up with them, thus allowing the transfer of data, such as music from an MP3 player, photos from a digital camera or video footage from a digital video camera. The benefit of this USB port is that most devices can now be plugged into most other devices without the need for lots of different cables. A COM port is the original name for the serial port, which allows data to be transferred to, or from a computer one bit at a time. Modern computers, as mentioned earlier, mostly now have USB ports, making the COM port more or less obsolete, but serial ports can still be useful as they are easily made, used and do not cost much. Diagnostics would also usually be controlled via a COM port. A USB port can be turned into a virtual COM port, by buying and using a serial to USB cable. A mini-disc CD will then instruct the computer to use this device connected via the USB port as a COM port. The computer will assign the device a COM port number. You must then go into 'Device Manager' and you will see the device that you have plugged in to the computer coming up. It might be a good idea, to unplug all other devices that are using USB ports so as to isolate the correct port. In Device Manager, you can now see a fully functional COM port.
