virtualbox.org

Hello,
I'm trying hard to set up an embedded development environment which expect a Ubuntu as a host(dev) computer.
Its workflow requires an RS-232C communication. So, I would like to make VirtualBox to recognize a Prolific USB-to-Serial cable.

On a Mac host, the Prolific cable is recognized as /dev/tty.usbserial. On a Mac, I tried a ZTerm to connect to a target board through the cable and worked. So, there is no question that /dev/tty.usbserial works.

However, when I tried to make the VirtualBox recognize it, it doesn't seem to work.
On "Ports" setting of a virtual machine, the Serial Ports tab presents "Enable Serial Port"

Under it, there are Port Number, IRQ and I/O Port, Port Mode and Port/File Path.
For Port Mode, I chose "Host Device", because I would like to utilize the actual H/W.
In POrt/file path, I typed /dev/tty.usbserial.

But then, if the virtual machine is launched, it hangs at launching the virtual machine.

Do you think the setting is correct?
For obvious settings like IRQ = 4 and i/O Port 0x3F8 are not the ones which need to be checked.

Or.. can't we just use Prolific USB to Serial?

I tried with Windows version of VirtualBox also, but it didn't seem to work either.
I put COM6 in that case, because the Prolific cable is recognized as or tied with COM6.

If there are any people who successfully use Prolific USB to Serial cable with VirtualBox, can you explain the right setting?

Thank you.

As far as I understand Virtualbox guests can only connect directly to real physical serial ports.
But you could try to attach the Prolific cable as USB device to the guest.

The settings you entered are correct as far as I'm concerned, however I'm not a Mac user and can't tell if you addressed the device correctly. I'm interested when you say that you also tried it on a Windows host and could not get it to work. I do use Windows hosts, and have had no problems with the similar devices I've used. You should be able to find several previous discussion of serial ports in VBox VMs on Windows hosts. I would however suggest using "COM6:" as the device name there (i.e. add the colon).

What error do you get in the guest application? Does it say that it can't open the comm port, or does it say that comms with the device failed? How fussy is the target device about comms timing? Because if it's fussy in the least then it will probably not work in a VM.

Hello, thanks for your answer.

mpack wrote:I would however suggest using "COM6:" as the device name there (i.e. add the colon).

Hmmm.. I didn't try it on a Windows. I did look up the documentation but it doesn't explain much.

mpack wrote:What error do you get in the guest application? Does it say that it can't open the comm port, or does it say that comms with the device failed? How fussy is the target device about comms timing? Because if it's fussy in the least then it will probably not work in a VM.

There is no error message from the VM on Windows. On the guest OS, Linux, doesn't complain either. I tried minicom on Linux but it just hangs there.
On Mac, it tries to launch a VM and hang there.