PowerComms Voltages

I was just testing my powercomms board (v1.2) again and noticed a few problems with the voltages i was getting
following the wiki's test:
With serial connector disconnected:
* Pin 15 to 11: 4 to 4.5V. I'm getting 3.25V
with serial connector into the PC (still leaving the communications connectors empty):
* Pin 15 to 13: -7 to -15V. i'm getting -6.2V
* Pin 15 to 11: 4 to 4.5V. i'm getting 3.25V
With jumper wire on comms connectors Pin 15 to 11 goes to 5V as expected.

Is this just a case of some dodgy soldering?? Are those unexpected voltages a big issue?

I assume you are talking the max232 IC? Pin 15 is 0VDC and pin 11 in input from the pic 0 to 5vdc. Pin 13 is RS232 input from the computer, +-12VDC. You must mean pin 12, which transmits 0 to 5VDC signals to the pic. The main thing is that when the R and T are jumpered and do you get the characters back on hyper terminal when you type them? If not, reflow the solder connections and check polarity of the Electrolytic caps, but if they were in backwards they would have exploded. Here is an image of the Max232
[www.lookrs232.com]