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Framing and Overrun Errors with Dosbox->USB->Serial->MoTeC Engine Management

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First post, by Archea47

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Greetings to all!

I would like to start by saying thanks for having the patience to read my message. Send out your invoices, kiss your wives - do whatever else you need to do first before lending a bit of your valuable time to my problem.

I've been using and appreciating DosBox for years now to play old games like XCOM and hope that it can be of service in this instance too.

I have a race car with an onboard MoTeC computer (ECU). It has a serial interface and uses DOS-based software to receive logged data and send new maps for values such as ignition timing advance and fuel trim. This is a problem for two reasons: 1.) modern laptops are seldom shipped with a serial port and 2.) the software is unstable in Windows 7 32bit Enterprise.

The software worked fine using a radioshack-sourced (no manf. name visible on the cable) USB->Serial cable on Windows XP. With Windows 7 it quickly hangs - I can unreliably update parameters but it seems I only have a temporal window before I have to manually terminate the process.

I've been experimenting with DOSBOX MB6. See the following output:

motecerrors1.jpg

With the USB->serial cable connected and the ECU powered off DOSBOX successfully opens Serial COM port 1. It throws the "WinPcap has to ..." warning and waits (all is well at this point). As soon as I send power to the ECU, however, DOSBOX starts returning the error messages you see. It gives an error roughly every second. Not surprisingly, when I try to use the software in this state it asks me to connect the cable to the ECU (it doesn't see or agree with the connection)

I've searched these forums and the internet for a couple hours and haven't resolved the conflict. I keep reading that we cannot pass parameters to directserial with the later versions of DOSBOX so I haven't modified any Serial settings (other than sending it the delay param with a value of 100, which made no change).

Here are the settings for the interface device. It does work with the original program outside of DOSBOX as I said but only temporarily so I believe these must be correct:

motecportsettings.jpg

I'm not sure what the default values of DOSBOX MB6 are or how to change them.

Attached also you will find my dosbox config. Note that the only changes I have made are some minor CPU alterations by suggestions I read on similar issues found on the forum here.

MANY, many thanks to any who can shed a little light here. I understand that this is beyond the scope of DOSBOX' usual applications

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Reply 3 of 9, by Archea47

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Hi H-A-L 9000 and all,

Unfortunately even with the latest SVN build and VC++ runtimes and with and without FICO off I had the same error message. We've simply had to carry one of my old laptops with us that can run the software (WinXP 32x)

Thank you for the help, though! For the purpose of the knowledgebase, I was not able to get DosBOX to successfully communicate with the MoTeC M4 on a Win7 Enterprise 64x system

I'll continue checking this thread in case anyone else has ideas

Kindly,
Andrew

Reply 4 of 9, by Zup

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Prolific made a good USB to serial adapter, but those things are a fucking pain in the ass.

I'd try with an "authentic" serial port (in a PCI or PCMCIA card), maybe the problem is the USB adapter (BTW, if you have one of those serial ports, you'd better use a real DOS, like FreeDOS).

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 5 of 9, by Archea47

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Zup wrote:

Prolific made a good USB to serial adapter, but those things are a fucking pain in the ass.

I'd try with an "authentic" serial port (in a PCI or PCMCIA card), maybe the problem is the USB adapter (BTW, if you have one of those serial ports, you'd better use a real DOS, like FreeDOS).

Hey Zup,

Thanks for the advice. I forgot to mention that the radioshack cable that was working with the software and WindowsXP is not Windows 7 compatible so I am indeed using a Prolific cable. It would communicate with the ECU under Windows7 but the software, even in compatibility mode, would hang after about a minute. I think that's very dangerous; imagine if some of the data was lost in transfer - say at 9500rpm your ignition or fuel tables start to read random data!! 😁

With DosBOX, though, the software claims that it isn't connected to the ECU to begin with

Reply 7 of 9, by presto

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Yikes.

Along with DOS games, I use it for a non-game application (a notation editor). However, it will not kill me if it stops working. Your application (a race car with an onboard computer) is a bit more dangerous. You CAN buy new laptops with serial ports (some HPs, for example). That, plus a dual-boot configuration with DOS or an earlier windows, might be more reliable than DOSBox for your high-speed application.

Reply 8 of 9, by Archea47

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presto wrote:

That, plus a dual-boot configuration with DOS or an earlier windows, might be more reliable than DOSBox for your high-speed application.

I imagine I could boot from some form of media to a DOS environment but would I be able to still use the USB to Serial cable?

Reply 9 of 9, by Dominus

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Afaik, no, you wouldn't be able to use the usb2serial cable (though I'm not 100% sure there isn't a hack for something like that).

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