serial.device troubles

[I have now got a relatively satisfactory setup for this running - still booting WB off the floppy, but got the setup script running, and now have AExplorer on the amiga]
I have an Amiga A1200 - which has an internal hard-drive installed with Workbench 3.0 (and a few mods like KingCon etc). It had been sat at the back of my store room for about 6 years - and I have decided to try and transfer all my Amiga content to my PC.
I now have AmigaExplorer and a null modem cable.
The problem is that when it aks me to "type ser: to ram:setup" - it fails with "cannot find object ser". in devs the serial.device exists, and I have commented out the stuff in startup-sequence and mountlist for kingCON. Having restarted - I still cannot get ser. Now if I boot from a floppy WB 3.0 (unmodified - but with a few errors - I think the floppy drive is on its last legs) - then I can do the type command.

So i eventually ended up with the setup file as long as i boot from floppy (okay - but not good enough)- only now, when I try the "RX ram:setup" command, and I get "command not found 5/1". Doing a list on Ram - it is most definately there. Should setup be text or binary? I didnt do a lot with rexx - but the file I got then was binary (accoridng to more and ed) - I fear the serial connection may be ropey. (Solved this small section - it is down to not having set the correct serial settings - this part now works)

Resolutely, I ensured that I have the same serial.device on my hdd as the floppy, the same startup sequence (I backed up the originals), and the same mountlist. I still cannot get ser: to work.
As an experiment- I tried mount ser: to be told it was already mounted.
Could anybody with deep amiga knowledge give me any furthar steps - I am now stuck and my somewhat rusty amiga knowledge appears to be at its limits. [Solved this: I get the feeling that the floppy wb doesnt have all of Arexx (although the mast is running and the libs apear to be there), but] I would [still!] really like to get this whole thing running of the HDD.

Sorry about the size of this post - but I hope giving as much of the story up front will help. [I have edited the stuff I have solved]
Cheers
Danny

[thomas]

You also need l:port-handler for ser:

Ram:setup is plain text.

I now have got ram:setup - as a script file (I thought the binary was suspicious), and as i tried to imply in my email - it is because I was not careful enough with the serial preferences. However - I will (later today) take a look to see if l: Port-handler is indeed on both the hdd and the floppy - and make sure I have the same version.
Thanks Thomas

Thanks Thomas - I copied the port handler to L - and found I had a huge amount missing from there. Not sure why. After rebooting - rit all works from the hd! Anyway - i am probably going to re-enable kingCON - i hope it can coexist with the ser device - I think it may interefere with it though. It is a simple extension, that allows slightly more intelligent CLI/GUI interfaces - eg scrollbars for viewing history. For my next trick - i am going to try and figure out how get the whole setup faster...