Reading from serial port under Windows

I'm not sure whether this is a bug but I'm having a problem reading
characters from the serial port under Windows.
I'm using ECLiPSe 5.0 under Windows 98 and also under Linux
(kernel version 2.2.5-22 - it's RedHat6.0).

Basically, I want to be able to read characters from and write characters to
the serial port. I have written the code below for this purpose
(at present the lines for Linux have been commented out).
I have two laptops connected via their serial ports and I wish to exchange
characters between them. When I do this using Linux, I can read and
write characters but when I try using the Windows version of ECLiPSe,
I can write but not read characters (get just blocks in this case
with nor characters received).

Essentially, what I need to know is how one can read characters from
the serial port under Windows?

Any help that you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Maurice.
__
Maurice Pagnucco                               email: morri@cs.toronto.edu
Cognitive Robotics Group
Department of Computer Science                 Phone: +1-416-978-7453
D. L. Pratt Building
6 King's College Road                          Fax  : +1-416-978-1455
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA, M5S 3G4.        WWW: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~morri/



getByte(Ascii) :-
    %% Windows - serial port settings 2400 baud, odd parity, 8 data bits, 1 stop
    system('mode com1: 2400 o 8 1 p'),
    %% Linux - serial port settings; probably overkill but it works!
    %system('stty -echo -icanon -iexten -isig -icrnl -inpck -istrip -ixon -cstopb cs8 parenb parodd -opost ispeed 2400 ospeed 2400 < /dev/ttyS0'),
    open('com1:', update, Stream), % Windows - Open serial port for reading and writing
    %open('/dev/ttyS0', update, Stream), % Linux - Open serial port for reading and writing
    get(Stream, Ascii),
    close(Stream),
    write('Received : '),
    write(Ascii), nl.

putByte(Ascii) :-
    %% Windows - serial port settings
    system('mode com1: 2400 o 8 1 p'),
    %% Linux - serial port settings; probably overkill but it works!
    %system('stty -echo -icanon -iexten -isig -icrnl -inpck -istrip -ixon -cstopb cs8 parenb parodd -opost ispeed 2400 ospeed 2400 < /dev/ttyS0'),
    open('com1:', update, Stream), % Windows - Open serial port for reading and writing
    %open('/dev/ttyS0', update, Stream), % Linux - Open serial port for reading and writing
    put(Stream, Ascii),
    flush(Stream),
    close(Stream),
    write('Transmitted : '),
    write(Ascii), nl.