Hi again kg4wsv,
It seems it was as easy as you made it sound!!!!
I had a look at my old code I used a few years ago while messing around with serials ports and after a few modifications it seems to be working.
So thank you all very much for sending me in the right direction. I would still be here come next Chrristmas using the libusb approach!
Incidentally I am using C, originally I was using Dev-C++ but it doesn't support the conio.h librray so I reverted to TurboC (from my college days) and with it I can use the same functions.
Does anyone know if there is a more modern free compiler which would support the conio library?
Anyway, thank you all so much for your suggestions, I am so grateful really.
(EDIT: I'll post my code here once I finish modyfing it for anyone in the same boat as me)