I've been searching, and probably not for the right thing, so I haven't found it. Hopefully, I'll explain what I'm looking for and somebody will give me the correct search phrase or a link.physical
I'm trying to use a very old piece of software that uses Physical Serial Ports within a VM. My latest PC (laptop) does not have a physical serial port that I can access (wrong docking station).
How can I configure the VM to provide a virtual physical serial port that I can map to the real serial port (that is a USB-Serial Dongle)?
Thanks in advance.
Grant
Try to use the USB2|Serial adapter from inside the VM
But there are already two COM Ports (1 & 2) in the VM. One if them is undoubtably the phyisical port that I can't get to due to not having the more expensive docking station. I'm not sure what the other is. When I connect the USB-Serial adapter, it shows up as COM3.
I know that when configuring my software, it asks for the IO port & IRQ, not a COMX designation. So I unless I can tell the VM how to use COMX (Via USB Dongle) on the host as a physical COM port in the VM, I don't know how that will work. If you explain it to me, I'll get it. I've been doing Embedded Systems Programming for nearly 20 years, I can understand the low level stuff.
Thanks in advance.
Grant
ok - then inspect your vmx-file.
One of the serial ports maybe used for Thinprint - something you probably dont want.
Have a look at my site for the parameters for serial ports - see
http://sanbarrow.com/vmx/vmx-serial-ports.html
So if I use this configuration: Windows-host useing a physical device com1, I'll have the physical COM1. Then I can specify the BaseAddr & Irq as used by my program? But how will that link to the USB-Serial Port on the host?
Grant
Also, yes thinprint is there.
And thanks for being so responsive.
Grant
> But how will that link to the USB-Serial Port on the host?
very good question - it sometimes works - sometimes not
some usb2serial adapters better work when used in the host - others work better when used in the guest - some dont work at all
Using WS 6.5 I was able to map 4 serial ports into a guest on a host that only had 2 real serialports - experiment with port numbers and other parameters.
There is no golden road for this
Success!
So I took your configuration, Windows host using a physical serail port, and added the baseAddr & irq. The filename can be used to designate the serial port on the host; USB or regular. So if "COM4" is a USB-Serial adapter on the host, and you specify COM4 and that'll be the port the baseAddr & irq are routed to.
Thanks a bunch. I hope others find this information useful.
Grant