A few years ago opening and communicating with a serial port was a big undertaking, especially if you were not a C or C++ programmer. Today you have a very good option -- Java, which is fully supported in the Domino environment and provides platform independence. Check out Java's javax.comm.CommPort Class. The CommPortIdentifier Class provides two open methods that allow you to open the port so that you can then get an input stream of data via the getInputStream method. You should be able to store this in a NotesStream from which you can read the text. Good luck!
This was first published in October 2003