ok. i see there are some misunderstandings on how a serial ports works going on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_serial_communication
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_port
what jimmi is trying to accomplish is using the DTR (4) and DSR (6) pins of the RS232 port to read switches. this is basically a hack which is not a part of the RS232 specification. these lines are meant to check if a telephone line of a modem is ready, or if the communication between pc and device somehow break down. nobody uses these lines for that purposes anymore, and it is quite a good idea to use these lines for connecting switches, but unfortunately vvvv´s RS232 node will not return the current status of these lines – it will just return the data which gets received according to the RS232 spec.
as it was demonstrated it is actually possible to get at least some behaviour when wiggeling these line, but i consider the
returned ÿÿÿ character more like the static noise used to be seen on tv channels late at night, as some interpretable data. the characters received will change with different baud rates, and may also vary with different rs232 hardware or cables.
anyway, if it works, thats cool, and i am not in the position to say it doesnt work, but i would rather suggest dismantling an old gamepad or mouse to get a much more reliable data input.