Passing and returning parameters using argc and argv

[umquat]

Okay I have a problem you may be able to help with. The situation is this. I've recently been asked to resurrect an old DOS based version of a piece of software that uses serial port access, and make it run successfully under windows xp. What I have discovered is that certain PC's correspond to the direct serial port commands in the old code, and some don't. The original code was written in Microsoft Basic PDS 7.1. Additionally it would be nice to support USB serial devices as legacy stuff is an issue generally particularly when it comes to laptops. I've knocked up a little C++ app which allows me to open close read and write to a serial port of any description, and the hardware that is connected to it seems to correspond in the correct manor. Now I'd like to interface the two together. I've not been able to find anything about using C++ dll's with this old Basic language but due to the simplicity of the read write commands I thought why not create an exe and pass in the necessary argc argv params to implement this. The problem is am I going to be able retrieve these on the return, as obviously the Read command will need to return what ever is read back to the original basic code.

Any thoughts and is there any other option I havent considered?

Regards

Gavin