RealTerm

Here it is! My favorite software for years! RealTerm has been, and I believe still is, the most used and least easy to understand software. Judging by the downloads from the official repository on SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/realterm/), I think it is the most downloaded, even though the last update was on October 13, 2017!

As I wrote on the homepage, I placed it in third place for a series of reasons, one of which is that development has been completely abandoned. Before the advent of SerialTool, this software was considered a must-have on the desktop of anyone using the serial port because it was, in fact, the only free software capable of sending a hexadecimal buffer through the serial port, leaving users with few alternatives.

Let’s start by saying that the graphical interface is very basic, unfortunately also very confusing and poorly documented. You have to experiment and see what happens each time.

That said, the author had a certain experience with the typical issues of the serial port and I believe he developed it according to his needs at the time, without much consideration for the fact that others might use it someday. It’s a real jumble of functions mixed together and poorly connected, but despite this, it does what it says.

One of the absolutely unique features for the time was the ability to have pre-stored buffers that were easy to recall. Unfortunately, there are only two, and you have to make do with them!

RealTerm also includes several screens related to an I2C serial converter produced by its sponsor, making it not very practical for general use. I have to admit that while any USB serial converter is sufficient for the serial protocol, things get complicated for I2C because communication with I2C depends on the type of converter used. In other words, you can't do anything with this function unless you buy their dedicated module. There are no alternatives in this regard.

Some time ago, I bought an FTDI USB to I2C converter that I have never tried and I believe I still have somewhere on my desk. Who knows, maybe I'll get the urge to try it and write a review about it.

Continuing with the description of this software, what made it quite unique was that it considered a whole series of peculiarities, such as multiple packet sending and the ability to terminate a buffer transmission by adding CR, LF, or CRC. I’ve always liked this feature, if you can say that.

This software was written in Delphi with Embarcadero's RAD Studio. The source code was published, but if you try to compile it… oops… the author kept the important parts for managing the serial port to himself, so it’s not compilable. I believe they were published only partially because there was also an attempt to charge for a Kernel driver to spy on the serial port. I infer that for this reason, he wanted to maintain control over the license or at least over the part where the author was compensated in exchange for the driver. I don’t know exactly how it worked, but I read some time ago on a forum that a user complained about not receiving the driver directly to his email, and the author publicly responded with a dispute because the payment hadn’t reached him! I deduce that, however good RealTerm might be, it was still written by a hobbyist who worked frequently with the serial port but had no idea of creating commercial software.

Well, I won’t go on any longer; let's look at each screen and comment on them a bit…

RealTerm

This screenshot of RealTerm showcases its rather old-school interface, but it gets the job done. The terminal window show the string I sent from another seiral port saying: “RealTerm… old but gold” in yellow, giving it that nostalgic feel.

Down in the Display tab, there are a bunch of settings to play with. You can change how the incoming data is shown using the “Display As” options, like switching between ASCII, Hex, and even combinations like Hex + ASCII. There are other cool formats too, like binary, nibble, and different integer formats.

You can check options like “Invert” to flip the text colors or “Half Duplex” if you're working with certain communication setups. There's a “newLine mode” for those who prefer seeing data line-by-line and a “ZBits” option for extra customization. If you're dealing with multi-byte data, you can set how many bytes to frame together in “Data Frames,” and there are settings for adjusting the rows and columns in your terminal display.

RealTerm might look a bit dated, but the Display tab gives you a lot of control over how you view your data, making it a versatile tool despite its appearance.

In the “Port” tab, you get to configure the baud rate, which is set to 9600 here, and choose the port number, which is set to 5. There's a section for setting the parity, and it looks like it's set to “None,” but you can also select odd, even, mark, or space if needed.

You also have options for data bits and stop bits, and you can see 8 data bits and 1 stop bit are selected. Below that, there's a setting for hardware flow control where you can choose between none, RTS/CTS, DTR/DSR, or RS485-tx.

There’s a neat feature to enable software flow control with checkboxes for receiving and transmitting Xon/Xoff characters, shown as 17 and 19 in hexadecimal, respectively. You can also see buttons to open or close the port and a checkbox to enable spying on the communication.

On the bottom right, there’s a status indicator panel that shows whether the port is connected and provides the status of various control signals like TXD, RXD, CTS, and others.

As I said before if you press the “Spy” button you'll get this message:

Don't send any donations unless you really want to throw away your money. You won't get anywhere with this message unless you find a leaked version of the driver, turn off Secure Boot on your PC, and run it while disabling all Windows security. I personally tried, but I did not get anywhere, and I've never seen it working!

Even though, you end up with this nice error…

I guess that this is the Tab I personally used the most. The “Send” tab.

In the “Send” tab, you can see various settings for sending data through the serial port. You have fields where you can type in numbers or ASCII text to send. There's an option to add line endings like carriage return (CR) and line feed (LF) either before or after the data, which is useful for formatting your data correctly for the receiving device.

You can also choose to send numbers or ASCII text and configure how the end-of-line (EOL) characters should be handled. There’s a checkable option for sending data literally, without interpreting special characters, and another option to strip spaces from the input.

There's also a section for dumping a file to the port, where you can select a file and send it directly. You can set how many times the data should be repeated and introduce delays between sends if needed. The controls for starting and stopping the sending process are straightforward, and you can keep an eye on the status indicators on the right to see what’s happening with your connection.

Wait… don't worry, this is not a repeat of the previous Port configuration picture. This is the “Echo” tab where you can forward packets to the network. Personally, I've never used this function with RealTerm, so I don't know much about it. As I mentioned before, RealTerm's GUI literally sucks! But still, it is a nice software.

This screenshot of RealTerm focuses on the “I2C” tab, which is dedicated to a custom USB to I2C module. Here, you can see various options and settings for working with I2C devices.

The interface allows you to interact with specific components like the BL301 LCD Display, PCA9544, PCA9545, MAX127, and aSC7511. You can adjust settings such as contrast for the LCD display, select different I2C buses, and read or configure the devices. There are buttons for initializing the display, writing numeric values, and toggling LEDs.

Even though the interface looks cluttered and a bit confusing, it provides specialized controls for those working with this custom I2C module, allowing detailed management and communication with connected devices.

In conclusion, RealTerm is a nice but not awesome serial port software. It's very popular and was the go-to option for serial communication before SerialTool came onto the scene and offered more advanced features and a more user-friendly experience.