-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello all.
I am experiencing more serial port problems in vbox 1.5.2, that I haven't experienced on physical machines, nor in microsoft's virtualpc. Here's what is happening: 1. When attempting to run a debian vm, and using the speakup screen reader with the Braille 'n Speak hardware serial speech synthesizer, I'm having the following issues: a. Speakup detects the Braille 'n Speak (bns) when probing for it, even if the bns is turned off at the time of the probe. This doesn't happen when running debian with speakup, and the bns as the speech synth on a physical machine. If running on a physical machine, the synth probe fails, like it should, when the bns isn't connected, or is turned off. b. If a large batch of data is sent to the bns from speakup, such as when reading the full screen all at once via the read screen speakup key, not all the data is spoken by the bns. When reading line by line manually, or when reading a screen full with a small amount of data, the problem doesn't happen. Let me attempt to illustrate this. Let's say I have a file containing the following text: "This is line1. This is line2. This is line 3. This is line4. This is line5. This is line6. This is line7. This is line8. This is line9." If I display this file on screen, with for example "more file.txt", what is spoken is: "in 8. This is line 9." However, if I remove "This is line 9." from the file, and only have 8 lines, displaying that file on screen causes it to be read in full normally. The issue here is not one of handshaking, because this happens regardless of if hardware, or software handshaking is used, and like I've said above, this doesn't happen when running on a physical machine, or in virtualpc. 2. If I use the bns as a synth at the dos prompt, using a screen reader called provox, I have similar issues. Reading the full screen in provox works fine, though I suspect this is because provox sends the data in small chunks. Reading line by line manually in provox also works. However, if I use a program that scrolls output on the screen, such as format.com when formatting a hard disk for example, the bns will lock up after a while, and say "waiting on serial device". If I pull the serial cable, the bns speaks the accumulated data, and keeps repeating it over, and over again until I turn it off, and then back on again. Again, I've never experienced this problem on a physical machine, or in virtualpc. 3. If I run the window-eyes screen reader inside a winxp vm, and try to use the bns as a speech synth, the bns says right from the beginning "waiting on serial device". If I then pull the serial cable, the bns speaks what window-eyes sent to it, and it doesn't loop like in provox. If I plug the serial cable back in, and window-eyes sends more data to the bns to be spoken, I get the same behavior, (I.E. "waiting on serial device", pull the serial cable, here what the bns had to say, plug the cable back in, and so on). Needless to say by now, this doesn't happen in virtualpc, or on a physical machine. 4. Next, I tried using hyperterminal inside the winxp guest to send a file from the bns (which is also a note taking device), to the pc. After waiting for a while, the bns aborted the transfer, simply saying there was an error, and hyperterminal simply popped up a dialog box saying "limit exceeded" with an ok button. Yes, this also works fine outside of virtualbox. 5. I then tried using hyperterminal from the guest, to transfer a file to hyperterminal running on a physical pc, the 2 being connected through a serial port assigned to the guest. This did work without a problem. 6. Finally, I assigned my dial-up modem's com port to be one of the winxp guest's serial ports. I then went into hyperterminal on the winxp guest, told hyperterminal to use the serial port assigned to the physical machine's modem, and tried issuing "at", followed by enter. Nothing happened. When running hyperterminal on the physical pc, and connecting to the modem's port, at does produce the expected "ok". I also tried sending "ata" from the winxp guest, which should have caused the modem to go off-hook, and attempt to answer a call. This also didn't work, and it does of course work when running hyperterminal on the physical machine. I haven't tested the modem in virtualpc though. The modem in question is a 3com2976, which is a hardware modem, so there is no way that these could be windows drivers issues. 7. I took my winxp image over to a second physical machine, which has a 3com2974 winmodem installed, and tried step 6 above on that machine inside the winxp guest, with the same results. Yes, this modem does also work just fine when running hyperterminal on the physical machine. 8. Back on the first physical host, I repeated step 6, using minicom in a debian guest this time. The results were again the same, and yes, the hardware modem does work on the physical machine with minicom just fine. I should mention as well that these are both internal pci modems, the 2976 being a hardware modem, and the 2974 being a winmodem that requires windows drivers, which I did not of course install in the winxp guest, since that wouldn't have made sense, given that the drivers are already installed and working on the host, and that I'm simply passing the modem's serial port through to the guest. Unfortunately, this isn't anything that I can put my finger on. All I know is that my physical serial ports/modems work just fine, and that my bns works just fine, when connected to, and communicating with programs running on the host machine. If I had to guess at the problem, I'd say there is some sort of buffering, and/or dtr/dts issue either in the vbox virtual port, or in the way that vbox connects the virtual port to the physical port. I also don't know how else to trouble shoot the problem. If there is anything else that I can do, please let me know. Also, I do have one of those 25-pin serial testing kits with the lights on top. A friend of mine is staying with me until the 30th, and I can hook up the bns to the serial port through that kit, and have him tell me the light status if that would help, and provide that info as well. If I don't here anything back from innotek regarding this on the list by the 1st of November, I will assume the problem cannot be readily identified, and will open a ticket with the same info I've just posted here. Thanks in advance for any help, or suggestions on what else I could try. I am of course as always running vbox on a winxp-pro host. Greg - -- web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc skype: gregn1 (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) - -- Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHIlvi7s9z/XlyUyARAqBwAKCeYW38g5IFNUu3P2b/SJ+qufIdhACg3rs6 Awm/Hv1uJnPYsKTlfK29kCM= =9Ckd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ vbox-users mailing list [email protected] http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-users
