Either you get the serial interface to work (do not exclude a hardware problem), or you "give up" and get a USB cable, preferably FTDI. Can't help you any further, sorry.
All is working well now with java 10 and upload and download. All the problem was not knowing which port was which. Removed the added serial card so that won't happen again. Thanks to all.
A special thanks to yaworski for the java 10 fix.