How to detect if my external device is connected to the Serial port

Question

Hi,
If I remove the cable from the serial port in my pc or either remove the serial cable from my external device, then when I send a request to open the serial port from my program, it basically does nothing, it just sits there.
I want to be able to show some sort of message or any other way of indicating to the user that they should check the cable.
below is the bit of code to open and set serial port params:
     public void openPort() {
          // Initialise the drivers
          System.setSecurityManager(null);
          String driverName = "com.sun.comm.Win32Driver";
          try {
               CommDriver commdriver = (CommDriver) Class.forName(driverName)
                         .newInstance();
               commdriver.initialize();
          } catch (Exception e2) {
               e2.printStackTrace();
          // port will be set in Store Operations.
          String wantedPortName = Configuration
                    .getParameter(ConfigSetting.EFT_COM_PORT);
          //System.out.println("wantedPortname : " + wantedPortName);
          Enumeration portIdentifiers = CommPortIdentifier.getPortIdentifiers();
          CommPortIdentifier portId = null; // will be set if port found
          while (portIdentifiers.hasMoreElements()) {
               System.out.println("counter");
               CommPortIdentifier pid = (CommPortIdentifier) portIdentifiers
                         .nextElement();
               System.out.println(pid.getName());
               if (pid.getPortType() == CommPortIdentifier.PORT_SERIAL
                         && pid.getName().equals(wantedPortName)) {
                    portId = pid;
                    System.out.println("found a macth");
                    break;
          } // end of while
          if (portId == null) {
               System.err.println("Could not find serial port " + wantedPortName);
               //System.exit(1);
          try {
               port = (SerialPort) portId.open("EFTDriver", // Name of the
                                                                           // application
                                                                           // asking for the
                                                                           // port
                         10000 // Wait max. 10 sec. to acquire port
          } catch (PortInUseException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
               System.err.println("Port already in use: " + e);
               //System.exit(1);
          // Now we are granted exclusive access to the particular serial
          // port. We can configure it and obtain input and output streams.
          try {
                    port.setSerialPortParams(9600, SerialPort.DATABITS_8,
                         SerialPort.STOPBITS_1, SerialPort.PARITY_NONE);
          } catch (UnsupportedCommOperationException usc) {
               System.err.println("Unsupported operation" + usc);
          }Please advise what method can I use for this purpose.
Thanks
Abhi

Answer 1

You mean it hangs in the open() method despite the timeout?