serial port problems

[Bob Sneidar]

Okay, this may be unrelated, but I have a setup that was using Parallels 4 under Snow Leopard. The guest OS was Windows Server 2003, and the software in Windows was MusicMaster, which (and here's the important thing) was using a USB key to authenticate a certain number of users accessing Server 2003 in a terminal session. 

Why is this relevant you ask? Because everything was working like a peach until one day after doing some system updates, the usb key was not connected to the virtual machine. Parallels thought it was, but there was no communication. Unplugging and replugging the USB key re-registered the USB device and it worked for about a day, and then disconnected again. 

After having them ship me out a new USB key to no avail, I began to think that maybe it was an incompatibility with the current OS and Parallels 4, but then why did it work for months and suddenly start having fits?? Well I upgraded to Parallels 6 and lo and behold, the problem went away and has not returned. 

I think that Apple recently did some kind of kernel change in the way USB devices are registered and maintained, probably as a security update. I would go back and check it in 4.0 (if you haven't already) to see if it actually DOES still work, and you aren't just "remembering" that it did. 

Just a shot in the dark. 

Bob


On Nov 7, 2010, at 10:07 AM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> On 11/7/10 9:18 AM, Larry Walker wrote:
>> I am trying to read data from a "serial port" (using a USB-serial adaptor).
> 
> Glad to see this here Larry. Just to fill everyone in, Larry and I have been going around with this issue for about a week in the tech queue without success (and I really appreciate his patience, he's been incredibly reasonable about it.) I asked Mark Waddingham about the problem and he said that basically the serial commands haven't been changed since their initial implementation back in MetaCard, and that any device that represents itself as a serial device should work with "open file" (but not necessarily with the device name returned by the drivernames. Use "modem:" or "printer:" instead.) He also said that they have never been reworked to support OS X; they were originally written for OS 9 and have always continued to work in OS X, so the code hasn't been examined.
> 
> Eric's comment that it works in 4.0 and not in 4.5 is something I don't think the team knows about. Since serial access hasn't changed in the engine, there must be some other change that peripherally affects serial port access. If that's so, then a bug report in the QCC would be in order.
> 
> I hope either Sarah or Phil will see this, since they are the serial/USB experts here. Maybe they have some comments to add or a workaround they've discovered.
> 
> -- 
> Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
> HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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