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S3a0tt3r
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Mapping serial ports around

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

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

Try to use the USB2|Serial adapter from inside the VM


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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S3a0tt3r
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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

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

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


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Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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S3a0tt3r
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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

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S3a0tt3r
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Also, yes thinprint is there.

And thanks for being so responsive.

Grant

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continuum
Immortal
Immortal

> 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


________________________________________________
Do you need support with a VMFS recovery problem ? - send a message via skype "sanbarrow"
I do not support Workstation 16 at this time ...

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S3a0tt3r
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Contributor

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

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