Hi Luke,
I am looking for information about getting a USB to RS-232 adapter to work in the FreeDOS environment. This is the first step in a project to find an alternative in programming legacy Motorola handheld and squad mobile radios.
I guess the experts here are Bret Johnson and Georg Potthast. My assumption is that such adapters implement a generic class of device, so support might be possible without knowing the particular chipset, but I also remember from Windows, that specific adapter cable chipsets only have drivers for some Windows versions, contradicting generic support.
My understanding is that the software only runs in DOS and connects to the radio via RS-232 serial. The local Motorola enthusiasts state these devices require the front-end program to run in an actual DOS environment and cannot handle emulation.
That depends on which emulators those enthusiasts have tried so far. I would assume that generic emulators like VMware or Qemu might not be sufficiently optimized towards DOS, or might just lack the feature to connect to a physical RS232 device, directly or through USB adapters. However, I see no general reason why it should not work, so I would suggest that you try DOS-specific emulators like DOSEMU2 or DOSBOX. The advantage of using emulators is that they can use the USB drivers of the host operating system (Linux, Windows, Mac) while presenting a simulated classic RS232 port to DOS and the apps running there. Depending on your planned expenses, you could also get a new or used DOS-compatible computer with a physical RS232 port, which avoids all USB issues. Most computers which still have a BIOS should work, while computers which only support UEFI and no longer have a legacy BIOS boot options are not suitable for running DOS directly on hardware. Regards, Eric _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
