title: What's a good, free serial port monitor for reverse-engineering?
body: <p>I'm reverse-engineering a serial protocol and getting frustrated by bad tools.  Does anyone know of a good, free tool for logging data to/from serial ports on Windows?</p>
  
  <p>Requirements:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Must be free</li>
  <li>Must not take control of the port (i.e. must hook the file APIs or the kernel rather than trying to open the device)</li>
  <li>Must have some sort of filtering features</li>
  <li>Writes either human-readable or binary logs, preferably in an easy to parse format</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Any ideas?  Portmon works, but its logs are difficult to work with and its filters are effectively useless; I've also tried a few commercial tools and nothing seems to fit the bill.</p>