CAN YOU FREE UP COMPORTS 1 AND 3 OR 2 AND 4 FOR USE WITH OLDER PR

This is done in your BIOS. You need to enter the BIOS at boot time by pressing DEL or F2 or whatever it says during POST but before the operating system starts. Your question reflects a certain level of technical competence so I'll continue, with the advice that you can really mess things up tinkering in the BIOS. On the other hand most BIOSs include a useful "return to defaults" pick for just such occasions.

You need to reserve IRQ 4 for the COM 1/3 pair and/or IRQ 3 for the COM 2/4 pair without knowing which BIOS you have, I can't be more specific how this is accomplished. Your goal is to prevent the PCI bus allocator from stealing those IRQs. Obviously (?) you will need to verify that COM ports are enabled. This all presumes that your special sewing machine application wants to attach the COM port hardware and go around the operating system. At that level you'll need to fool with XP's DOS Compatibility mode settings. Assuming you have XP.

You might try reposting the question naming the operating system and the error or reason why you feel the need to "free up" the COM ports.