I spent a whole day trying to figure out why I only got square boxes, a couple of random numbers and an occasional ‘f’ now and then. I read somewhere that the configuration file for the socket server had to match the settings of the serial drivers. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I took it for granted that it was configured using a set of common settings. It turned out that I was wrong.

My drivers were set to 9600 baud, while my socket server ran at 19200 baud. Setting the socket server to 9600 baud solved all of my problems! Yes, all of them.