I'm a hardware person who have been dealing with RF devices for almost 10 years. Recently I was commissioned to make a MFC based Visual C++ code to open and communicate the serial port based liquid crystal filter. Since I was not a computer science student, this was really beyond what I expect. After I bought this book with Ivor Horton's Visual C++ 2008, my work was like..'a morning coffee.' It has the line to line explanations, old C++ to VC++ conversions...etc. If you need different language like MATLAB, VB, Labview, it will cover them, too.

Some people said this book's example is so specific to follow; I don't think so. If you need to open serial port with VC++, that would mean you also have to make some hardware devices or analyze the hardware stuff by yourself.
Even if I didn't use the example provided by this book, this book gave me the enough example how to test the serial port communication. You can apply this to your own work.

For testing or making some serial devices, you basically need a multimeter, female or male serial ports, some cables..etc.

Also, you may have to configure your computer's bios setup.
Don't miss the CD on the back cover.