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parallax usb-serial help — Parallax Forums

parallax usb-serial help

DGREDGRE Posts: 8
edited 2006-10-19 00:20 in General Discussion
Has anyone gotten the parallax usb - serial ftdi adaptor to work with mac virtual pc ? I'm using windoze 98 OS--I have used the keyspan adaptor which worked on and off but mostly off and had high hopes for the parallax adaptor -but seems to not work at all --thanks

Comments

  • Oliver H. BaileyOliver H. Bailey Posts: 107
    edited 2006-09-15 03:13
    There are several reasons that configuration won't work reliably. Most Virtual PC's have limited support for USB devices and few serial USB type devices are supported. Next, few people are still developing for Windows 98 since it is no longer supported by Microsoft. Besides, the driver model for Windows 98 was not as reliable as the 32 bit model for Windows 200, XP, and 2003. If you want to use an FTDI chip on the MAC, it should work for MAC OS X. as there are native drivers for FTDI that work on Linux and FreeBSD, the later of which MAC OS X is based on. If it's Windows you want to run, try at minimum Windows 2000 but I doubt that the Virtual PC will support that device.

    Oliver
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2006-09-15 05:04
    Another option is to use the FTDI chip with the Mac OS driver and present the serial port to windows as a plain serial port (COM1 or COM2) using the com port preferences configuration window. I use that all the time for both Windows 98 and Windows XP under Virtual PC (and Guest PC) rather than letting Windows use its FTDI driver. I've pretty much switched over to Windows XP because the Propeller Tool won't run under Windows 98, but I've consistently been letting the Mac OS handle the FTDI devices.

    I have also used the Keyspan USA-19QW high speed serial adapter with all the Stamps using the Mac OS driver and Virtual PC. Virtual PC also works fine with PIC programmers like the PICkit1 and PICkit2 although I prefer to use the Mac interfaces.
  • Allen HuffmanAllen Huffman Posts: 93
    edited 2006-10-19 00:20
    I was successfully using Virtual PC 7.0.1 with Windows 98 with a USB FTDI serial adapter to run with Windows BS1 software. I discovered that upgrading VPC to 7.0.2 make USB serial devices stop working. I was using this as a captured COM port to VPC, and it worked great.

    But, now that I try it this year, it no longer works. It's quite possible that updates to Mac OS X have produced some incompatibility, and Microsoft has discontinued VPC.

    I did test Parallels and Windows 98 on my new Intel Mac, and it worked just great with the FTDI USB serial device.

    Feel free to e-mail me if you wish to talk Mac and BS1. I also played with the Keyspan.

    -- Allen

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