USB Serial Port

[wdatkinson]

Mac OS 10.5.5, VB 2.0.2, Running a Windows XP, SP3 Guest.

I just discovered VB a week or so ago. I've been running Parallels for the last couple of years and playing around with Fusion every now and then.

I have my VM running quite well, and much faster under VB that the other options mentioned above. However, I still have one issue I can't resolve.

I routinely work with hardware devices that I need to configure/access via a serial terminal. I have an FTDI USB to Serial converter. This unit worked fine with Parallels and is recognized by my Mac. When I try to attach it to the VM nothing happens. If I try again, I get a message that the device is busy processing a previous request.

I've played around with turning on and off USB 2.0, and enabling/disabling serial ports on my VM. No go. I need to be able to use this adapter. Any suggestions?

[wdatkinson]

Here's what I get:

USB device 'FTDI usb serial converter' with UUID {168ab832-9cfe-4f43-a931-b7bb6293c7fa} is busy with a previous request. Please try again later.


Result Code:
NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG (0x80070057)
Component:
HostUSBDevice
Interface:
IHostUSBDevice {173b4b44-d268-4334-a00d-b6521c9a740a}
Callee:
IConsole {d5a1cbda-f5d7-4824-9afe-d640c94c7dcf}

[caver01]

I get the same issue. I did once kinda half make it work by running a third party utility on the mac that let me pipe the serial output port in VB to a device path in OS X that this utility picked up, but in the end, it really only worked inbound and would corrupt data outbound to my serial device.

I see in a recent change log for 2.0.x something about "Experimental Support for Real Serial ports" or something like that. What is this? I can't find any docs about it. I'd be happy to play along and "experiment" if I knew what this was.

[wdatkinson]

I saw that as well, but as with you, I can't find any documentation on it. I did just upgrade to 2.0.4, and the issue persists.

What's funny is the USB-Serial adapter I have works flawlessly with both XP and the Mac, so its definitely something to do with the VM. Especially since Parallels handles it just fine.

[redgator]

I have seen similiar problems with a

Prolific Technology Inc. USB-Serial Controller D.

NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG 0x80070057

and

XILINX Platform Cable USB II

NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG 0x80070057

Both saying "[device] is busy with a previous request."

Neither device works on Mac OS X as far as I know, and that may be the issue...

[King8000]

It doesn't seem to be serial or Mac specific - I have the same problem with my USB hard drive on a Linux guest. (Windows XP host)

USB is supposed to work on Linux hosts, and I've fixed up the (VERR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) issue. (See http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/747)

Does anyone else have any thoughts on how to fix this?

[King8000]

I've found a fix/workaround that seems to work OK.

Unplugging and replugging in the device allowed my guest to see it and use it properly.

See http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/1974

I hope that works for others as well.

[redgator]

I have seen similiar problems with a

XILINX Platform Cable USB II

NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG 0x80070057

Both saying "[device] is busy with a previous request."

Neither device works on Mac OS X as far as I know, and that may be the issue...

This is VB 2.0.4 on a Macbook Pro running Leopard with a FC9 guest.

Some progress: By constraining the device definition, the devices are now getting captured and are visible to applications in the guest.

The original definition included many fields (as many as were probed by the ; I cleared all but Name: and Vendor ID:, and now these devices work (well, they aren't working, but I can now see them to debug the FC9 drivers...)

I've had this approach succeed with two devices now, the Xilinx Platform Cable USB II DLC10 and a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000.

----

And to finally finish the story, I have been able to run ISE 10.1 Webpack and IMPACT under the FC9 guest and access the XILINX Platform Cable USB II DLC10 and program my Avnet FX12 Evaluation board (download to the FPGA and/or program the flash memory).

The ISE windrvr6 drivers don't look to work under FC9 (old and "tainted"), and the ISE libusb drivers don't look to work either ("control tranfer error" [sic]), but I've been able to use the user-mode driver provided here:

http://rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/

And I have successfully downloaded code and run the XMD (embedded PPC405) debugger on the Platform Cable.

Now I can do my FPGA work on the damned MacBook Pro they assigned to me... and there are more than a few RealMacBoys watching my progress...

[macgerlach]

hi redgator,

i'd like to ask you what you mean by "contraining the device definitions (many fields)"? where do you constrain them? in vb or mac os x? or in the guest os?
could you describe this a bit more?

here's some information:
i have an mbp5,1 with snow leopard, vbox 3.0.12 r54655m and ubuntu 9.10/amd64 as guest os. furthermore, i use xilinx tools 11.3. my cable is an "dlc9g".

my problem is, that the guest doesn't recognize the usb cable corretly.
the same usb cable works well when using it with a native ubuntu 9.10/amd64 with my desktop pc at work. what i did is:
- copy "$XILINX/bin/lin64/xusbdfw.rules" to "/etc/udev/rules.d"
- adapt the udev-rules: change "$TEMPNODE" to "$tempnode" (otherwise it won't work under ubuntu 9.10)
- copy "$XILINX/bin/lin64/*.hex" to "/usr/share"
- install package "fxload"
as mentioned before, this works perfectly with my native ubuntu system.

when using vbox and pluggin in the cable, the kernel log tells me the following:
- usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address <x>
however, only sometimes a message appears:
- usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
only if this line appears in the kernel log, the device is detected then it is visible in "lsusb", otherwise, "lsusb" doesn't prompt anything until i disconnect the device.

now here's the clue:
- IF NOT using the udev rules (and hence no FXLOAD command), the LED down't light up, but IF the kernel detects the device and chooses a configuration, the device appears in "lsusb".
- IF USING the udev rules (-> FXLOAD), AND IF the kernel detects the device, it is immediately disconnected from the guest os, but still visible in the vbox usb menu (and is now recognized as XILINX instead of UNKNOWN DEVICE xxxx:yyyy).
- when trying to reconnect the device to the guest os, i also get the error

Code: Select all

NS_ERROR_INVALID_ARG 0x80070057
<device> is busy with a previous request.

so this is how far i got. i hope, this is not too much text for you, i tried to give a specific description to tell that i've already done the standard steps...

hope you have some hints on that.

kind regards,

macgerlach

[codehead]

I am running mac osx 10.5.8 on an intel mbp running a Windows XP guest.

So I have been fighting with the same issue of not being able to get the Xilinx programming cable or the Prolific Technologies usb to serial adapter to connect correctly until recently. The first thing I did to get the Xilinx cable working was to create the following settings in my "ports" settings in virtual box (all of these values were automatically put into the filter as a result of plugging in the device but I basically removed all the ones I thought wouldn't need like Manufacturer etc.)
Name: XILINX
Vendor ID: 03fd
Product ID: 0008
Revision: 0000
I left the rest blank and changed "Remote" to any.

It took me several trial and error attempts to get this to work, but in the end the right combo of plugging in the device, rebooting the guest, rebooting the host and sacrificing a small mammal I was able to get the guest to recognize the programming cable. I had to plug the cable in and then start the virtual machine. If I tried starting the virtual machine first and then plugging the cable in later after the guest booted, I would get that extremely disheartening error of either "<device> is busy with a previous request." or "<device> is in use by someone else". I got similar results if I had the programming cable already plugged in and working, then unplugged and replugged (so stupid).

As for the serial to usb device, I followed pretty much the same process. The values for my filter are:
Name: Prolific Technology Inc. USB-Serial Controller D [0400]
Vendor ID: 067b
the rest are blank and again I changed "Remote" to any. The solutions/problems are consistent with what I posted about the programming cable.

Note: Though these devices need to be treated specially, I have never had a problem with a usb mass storage device. As long as I unmount the USB device from osx, the guest can mount/unmount the usb device with no problems... I wished my programming cable and usb to serial device would work that way too .