"Promised" serial port feature removed?

Hi,

I pre-ordered Parallels and have used the last couple of betas, and I just installed RC 1. In the previous betas, when I tried to create a serial port using the assistant, there were 3 choices for a serial port. Use a Socker, Use an output file, and a real serial port. The third optoin was disabled (greyed out) so I expected that this was functoinality to come. Now in the RC version, the third option has been removed. This was a key feature as I use Windows to communicate with a piece of lab equipment via a serial port. I used Virtual PC in the past and it would rout Mac serial ports to COM ports in Windows so I wouls avoid conflicts with having both the Mac and Windows fighting for the USB device.

This is frustrating as I often use a serial adapter that has Mac drivers but not Windows drivers (which uses the Mac mini din-8 connectors). Now I'll have to change my cables and adapter (the adapter costs more than Parallels) AND Windows and the Mac will be fighting over the USB device. It is easier to share a serial device because there is no memory resident driver always fighting each other for the device. You can simply quit the software on the Mac side (so it closes the port) and immediately launch the Windows app that needs the COM. Both use the mac's USB-Serial driver instead.

Was this an ommision or is a really useful feature for me now gone before it got here?

Thanks,

Roch

 

I didn't realize that there's an Intel based Mac that has a serial port... I thought that's why this option disappeared...

/D

 

I added a USB serial port. It is a native port (Port 1) to the mac, but I cannot connect it to the VM using Paralells (either in beta 6 or the RC). I had contact support before the RC and they were looking at it (to repro). Hopefully they will get this fixed.

Mike

 

My experience with VirtualPC is similar. On my PowerPC Mac, I have a Mac driver for a USB-serial converter. I have Mac software that uses it to talk to some equipment, but I also have to use some Windows software for calibration purposes (the manufacturer only has a Windows version). On VirtualPC, I can tell it to map COM1 to a Mac serial port, which is provided by the USB-Serial adapter. That way, only one USB driver is required to allow both Mac and PC software to talk to the machine. I once tried loading the USB driver in the Windows one as well (for a USB-Serial adapter that had drivers for both), but it made the whole thing unstable. I went back to the original configuratoin and it works reasonably well.

For a less esoteric example, my Garmin GPS has a serial port. I use MacGPS pro to do most of the work transferring stuff back and forth via the adpter (th eone with only Mac drivers), however to transfer maps back and forth I can only use Windows software (MapSource). So far, I cannot do this with Parallels so when this becomes critical, I may have to forget Parallels for a while and use bootcamp instead. I prefer the VM solution, but if it does not work, it does not work.

I hope either the serial port gets properly implemented soon (not likely if they removed the button raher than implemented the feature the button represented) or that they come up with a workable and reliable USB solution (and I buy a new adapter with drivers for both OSes).

Cheers,

Roch

 

There might not be an Intel mac with a serial port, but there are plenty of USB -> RS232 converters that I'm sure many of us use. I haven't had a serial port on any of the Macs, Power PC or Intel, that I've ever owned. Same goes for floppy drives. I'd like to see a way to map to physical serial ports and physical floppy drives. There isn't much on the Mac that needs these devices, but plenty of stuff in Windows would like to use them.

 

I'd be very interested in hearing how this resolves. I've spent days fiddling with Virtual PC on my old PPC Mac, trying to get XP on it to see a serial data device, connected via the recommended Keyspan serial-USB adapter, with the Keyspan software installed on both the OS X and WinXP sides. Tried every configuration but it'd never recognize the RS232 device. This is mission critical, and why I now want to try Parallels on a MacBook.

 

Check out this tool:
http://eudyptes.com/SerialClient.php

It's allowed me to use my KeySpan serial adapter in WinXP.

Also, I've successfully used one OS (WinXP) as a serial client, and another OS (Linux) as a serial server, so I could have a serial console when linux booted up. I just ran hyperterm on WinXP and voila! No Keyspan needed.