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First post, by hanz99

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I'm running WIN 7 on X64, The motherboard (DH67CF) has no serial ports. I been using USB-SERIAL port(PL-2303 Proliofic). On my other system I had a serial port and I run my DOS programs.

Can I use DOSBOX on my new system using the USB-SERIAL port??

Thanx

Hanx

Reply 1 of 7, by eL_PuSHeR

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[Thread moved to DOSBox General Section]

Why do you need serial ports? If it's for running some specific apps, keep in mind that DOSBox main target are DOS games. Your app(s) might or might not work at all.

Reply 2 of 7, by BigBodZod

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Maybe a PCI or PCIe serial port card from SiiG would work ?!?

Not sure if it supports LEGACY OS's or not as I think everything is controlled by software rather then DIP Switches and/or Jumper blocks.

No matter where you go, there you are...

Reply 3 of 7, by ariqu

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Looking at the dosbox.conf I generated, when you specify a serial port, you can address it as COM#. The adapter you have should either have software or Windows may have it already that will give it a COM# address. When you specify the serial port in DOSBox's config file, you just put that in there, like 'serial1=directserial realport:com1'.

Reply 4 of 7, by Jorpho

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Indeed, it does not make any difference to DOSBox whether the serial port is on a USB-to-serial adapter or on the motherboard itself.

However, some of those older serial devices just aren't compatible with USB-to-serial adapters, on a hardware level.

Reply 5 of 7, by DosFreak

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According to HAL9000 not all USB->Serial adapters are equal. You would have to ask him which ones are the "good" ones.

See threads like this one: Serial port fails only on windows 7.

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Reply 6 of 7, by markoldgamer

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I still run a number of applications at work that need a serial port, ranging from virtually new Win7 compatible applications to an old (20+ years old) DOS program. That DOS program runs fine under the Windows XP command prompt (even under XP Mode in Win7). It even runs under DOSBox (although I've not used it that way, and if I did I wouldn't be asking for support as its not a game). Anyway, using these applications in recent years means I've had to use USB to Serial adapters as the ports vanished from laptop PCs, and my colleagues and I have found the best USB adapters are, bizzarrely, the cheapest ones! Some of the high end adapters have too many features and use fancy drivers that get in the way of 'simple' programs. The cheap ones, however, use very basic drivers to emulate a hardware serial port. Better still, the cheap ports also allow the port number to be changed in device manager meaning it can be set to a DOS application friendly number (the DOS application I use only works with COM1!). We've used the cheap blue Startech adapter in the past with no problems, and that costs less than £10 in the UK. Provided your program accesses the port via conventional means it should work with one of these cheaper ports. However, the usual caveats apply. This is just my experience and I do not offer any guarantee it will work for you.....try it at your own risk.....don't blame me if it doesn't work etc. Good luck, and any chance of telling us what your program is? As has been said Dosbox is not ideal for non-games and there might be a better solution. For example, I have Oracle VirtualBox running 'real' MSDos 6.2 quite happily. I've even managed to get the upper memory going, along with a Sound Blaster DOS driver and Windows 3.11 complete with TCP/IP networking to the Windows 7 host. But I still go back to DOSbox for Day Of The Tentacle because there it works perfectly!

Reply 7 of 7, by Jorpho

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markoldgamer wrote:

Anyway, using these applications in recent years means I've had to use USB to Serial adapters as the ports vanished from laptop PCs, and my colleagues and I have found the best USB adapters are, bizzarrely, the cheapest ones! Some of the high end adapters have too many features and use fancy drivers that get in the way of 'simple' programs. The cheap ones, however, use very basic drivers to emulate a hardware serial port.

You realize that many of these things actually use exactly the same chip, right?

Better still, the cheap ports also allow the port number to be changed in device manager meaning it can be set to a DOS application friendly number (the DOS application I use only works with COM1!).

I'm pretty sure that's a function of Windows. And of course DOSBox will let you remap the ports however you see fit.