Hi everyone,

I need urgent assistance with a project upgrade. I am rewriting/upgrading a software application originally built in 2015 (PEG 2015) designed to interface with a geoelectric signal reader machine.

System Setup & Problem Overview:

• Hardware: Geoelectric measurement machine reading ground electrical signals.
• Connection: USB-to-Serial connection operating as a virtual COM port (e.g., COM3).
• Issue: I am unable to establish a working connection between my upgraded application and the hardware. I need to know:
  1. How to properly initialize and open the COM port connection in code.
  2. The exact structure/protocol of the data stream coming from the machine over the cable to the PC.

What I have / What I know so far:

• I have the legacy binary (PEG 2015.exe) that works with the machine.
• The device relies on a USB-to-UART/Serial driver (such as FTDI, CH340, or CP210x) exposing a virtual COM port.

Specific Questions / Where I need guidance:

1. Serial Port Configuration Parameters: What are the standard ways or tools to determine the exact port settings required by the device?
   • Baud rate (e.g., 9600, 19200, 115200)
   • Data bits (e.g., 8)
   • Parity (None, Even, Odd)
   • Stop bits (1 or 2)
   • Flow control (RTS/CTS, XON/XOFF, or None)
2. COM Port Sniffing & Data Protocol: What is the best workflow/tool to monitor the traffic between PEG 2015.exe and the machine without locking the COM port?
   • Can you recommend lightweight tools (e.g., Serial Port Monitor, Wireshark with USBPcap, IO Ninja, RealTerm) to capture raw ASCII/HEX frames?
   • How can I differentiate between handshake/polling requests sent by the PC and telemetry responses sent by the geoelectric reader?
3. Decompiling / Inspecting the Legacy .exe:
   • What are the recommended tools to decompile or inspect PEG 2015.exe to retrieve the original serial settings and parser routines (e.g., dnSpy/ILSpy for .NET, Ghidra/IDA Free for native binaries)?

Environment & Tech Stack:

• OS: Windows
• Target Programming Language for New App: ( Python )

Any guidance, code snippets for port handling, or reverse-engineering methodologies for serial hardware would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!