How does STEP5 V 7.23 set up the Baud rate and Parity etc for it's serial port when running under XP-Professional?

Within the software is a drop down box to select which port (COM2: in my case) but nothing to set the baud and parity etc.

At the moment I'm going to the command prompt in a DOS box, and running the MODE command to set 1 start, 8 bit data, 2 stop bits and NO PARITY at 9600. (ie 11 bit byte) But once STEP5 runs it changes the parity to EVEN resulting in a 12 bit byte and framing errors.

I can find no reference to this in the documentation - help please !

In the folder STEP5 there's a folder named "S5_SYS". In this folder there's a file named "S5@@@@AS.INI".

;Configuration file for initializing the AS511 interface

; [DEFAULT]
; IO=3f8
; IRQ=4
; BAUD=9600
; STOPBITS=2
; PARITY=EVEN
; RESPONSE_TIME=2000
; CHAR_TIME=15000
; BLOCK_LENGTH=256
; BLOCK_TIME=200
; TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
; SIO_SPEED=SLOW

[COM1:]
IO=3f8
IRQ=4
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=2000
CHAR_TIME=15000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

[COM2:]
IO=2f8
IRQ=3
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=2000
CHAR_TIME=15000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

[COM3:]
IO=3e8
IRQ=4
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=2000
CHAR_TIME=15000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

[COM4:]
IO=2e8
IRQ=3
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=2000
CHAR_TIME=15000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELECOM. 300-600 BAUD
[COM1: SONDER1]
IO=3f8
IRQ=4
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=512000
CHAR_TIME=2000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELECOM. 1200-24000 BAUD
[COM1: SONDER2]
IO=3f8
IRQ=4
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=128000
CHAR_TIME=2000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELECOM. >2400 BAUD
[COM1: SONDER3]
IO=3f8
IRQ=4
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=32000
CHAR_TIME=2000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELECOM2 1200-2400 BAUD
[COM2: SONDER4]
IO=2f8
IRQ=3
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=128000
CHAR_TIME=2000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELECOM2 >2400 BAUD
[COM2: SONDER5]
IO=2f8
IRQ=3
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=32000
CHAR_TIME=2000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELESERVICE COM 1
[COM1: SONDER6]
IO=3f8
IRQ=4
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=128000
CHAR_TIME=50000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW

;TELESERVICE COM 2
[COM2: SONDER7]
IO=2f8
IRQ=3
BAUD=9600
STOPBITS=2
PARITY=EVEN
RESPONSE_TIME=128000
CHAR_TIME=2000
BLOCK_LENGTH=256
BLOCK_TIME=200
TIME_AFTER_BREAK=0
SIO_SPEED=SLOW