RS232 Serial Communications via FreeDOS is not working

[mdklassen]

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Maybe a better way of wording this is: Can Windows 10 64-bit boot freeDOS 16-bit o/s in a virtual machine? The OP will need to determine this.

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From: Though “barely an operating system,” DOS still matters (to some people)

FreeDOS has become much more friendly to virtualization and hardware emulation

and:

Because of how close to the hardware FreeDOS is, it’s been used as a teaching tool for serial device programming, driver development, and as a developer platform for other embedded DOS environments.

Also, a "how-to" document: http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox

for virtualizing FreeDOS.  Updated 31-January-2017.

[timatboston]

Hi Bob_ii,

Thank you for the response.  Yes, I think it helps.

Regarding your points:

1. I understand that the utility was wrote for DOS 3.1.  It is truly a DOS program for controlling and configuring the Protocol Analyzer. 

2. I have two identical computers here factory configured with Win10.  I have freedos installed on a separate HD that I've swapped in on one PC.  Both will communicate via a cmd window ( C:>echo hello>com1 ).  This then also shows up on the protocol analyzer.

3. I tried.  Other people there confirmed that the tech who verified it is no longer with the company though.

[Bob_ii]

mdKlassen: Thanks, good info, it'll come in handy.

Tim,

Okay now we know the ports are functional under Win 10. Where to go from here:

1. Boot one of the systems with freeDOS. Boot standalone with freeDOS directly on the h/w. Install the utility and see if it runs (you won't have access to the serial ports, that's ok, we just want to see if the utility will start and shutdown under freeDOS). I expect this will work okay. If this doesn't work don't bother with 2 and 3.

2. Put Win 10 back on the above system. Get yourself a Win 10 hypervisor (eg. VirtualBox). Install and configure it (I've got no background with hypervisors, maybe someone on this forum could help?)

3. Install freeDOS as a client under the hypervisor. After booting the freeDOS client MODE should access the serial ports no problem. Copy the HP utility to the system and test. I think HP tested the utility like this. You should be good to go at this point.

If 3 doesn't work for some reason you could try DOS 6.22 and do your testing with it instead. If none of them work find an old copy of DOS 3.1.

Bob

[timatboston]

1. Yes, verified that the utility works fine with the exception of serial on FreeDOS.

2 & 3. I have tried running FreeDOS under VMWare in Win10 to no avail.  It works just like FreeDOS works natively with regard to the serial ports. 

You bring up a good point about MS-DOS.  I will see if I can create a flash drive with MS-DOS on it to try both natively and under VMWare.

[Bob_ii]

Hi Tim,

Just had a quick read, this: http://wiki.freedos.org/wiki/index.php/VirtualBox might be worth testing. It covers what you need to do and it looks fairly painless. Thank mdklassen above for the info and link.

Bob

[Bob_ii]

Hi Tim, Did you have any luck with this? Bob

[timatboston]

CF4,

The FreeDOS serial communications is now working on my HP PCs.  The serial port was expecting DTR and RTS signals to be asserted.  Once the PA asserted those, it worked...   Nothing with the PCs themselves was at fault.

Tim