Windows 95 Guest Serial Connection

[Tom123]

Hey everyone

I want to use the a Serial communication (com RS232).
Therefor i need a driver for the Serial port that works on windows95a i couldn't find one in this forum nor google.

Is there maybe a guide for installing such a driver, or in General, Setup the Serial port?

thank you
best regards

Tom

[mpack]

I want to use the a Serial communication (com RS232).
Therefor i need a driver for the Serial port that works on windows95a i couldn't find one in this forum nor google.

Serial port support is built into Win95, no other driver is required. If you added the serial port to the VM settings after Win95 was installed then you need to go into the Win95 control panel and add new hardware (Win95 pre-dates plug and play).

[Tom123]

thank you for the answer

But it wont connect with the Programm it Needs to. I have the same Programm on a very old Laptop with Windows 95, there it works perfectly.
Now i tought to make a VM just to be sure that i always have the possibility to use this Programm.

The Programm is called CS3000, from Reliance Rockwell.

Is there maybe a tool to find out if a Serial com is working?
A bit strange is that the device Manager Shows the (com1) Connection, but it still doesn't work.

best regards

Tom

[mpack]

There are a lot of reasons why the virtual COM port will be present, but not working for you. Perhaps you failed to configure the correct baud rate inside Win95 or the application. Perhaps you have an incorrect cable or are connected to the wrong host port. Perhaps you failed to select the assign the correct host port. Perhaps the host port doesn't exist. Perhaps the host port is already in use by a host application. Perhaps the PLC doesn't use an RS232 port at all, it just looks like one.

However, we can eliminate some of those.

Please show me a screenshot from the "Ports (COM & LPT)" branch of the host's Device Manager.

Please give me a VM log file: with the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.

Include the <vm name>.vbox file from the VM folder inside the log file zip.

Please follow the above instructions carefully.

The easiest tool you can use to debug RS232 comms is another laptop running terminal software which lets you see incoming characters.

[Tom123]

Hey mpack

thanks for the quick response.
A collegue has given me a tipp, now it seems to work, well almost.
I m now sertain that i have the right Com Port pysically alswell as virtually.

Now the next step is trying to connect with a programm that s called CS3000, it is for saving parameters on GV3000 reliance converters.
The programm is installed on the Windows 95 guest and it is a Windows 95 Programm. Now i have the problem that it connects but then at
about 80% it stops and gives me a communication error.

the screenshots are in the attachments i hope that s alright.

best regards

Tom

[mpack]

I'm afraid you made the screenshots too small to be readable to my eyes (can you read them?), plus the zip does not contain the .vbox file I asked for.

Thanks for the log. The only thing I notice for now is that there's no reason to have the Guest Additions ISO mounted in the virtual CD drive: there are no additions for Win95, or any other member of the DOS based Windows family - only the NT family is covered. You should eject this CD and reboot the VM.

[Tom123]

I'm afraid i can't make them much bigger they Need to be under 100kb. But i can write the Data down.

Hoste device Manager:

Baudrate: 19200
Databits: 8
Parität: None
Stoppbits: 1
Flow control: None

FIFO-Puffer: On
Entrance-Puffer: scale 8
Translate-Puffer: scale 16

Exactly the same is on the Guest System.

And about the "<vm Name>.vbox" file i sommehow can t find that one, is there maybe a path where the file shud be?

thanks a lot
best regards

Tom

[mpack]

You can make the images bigger if you eliminate some of the information, e.g. I didn't actually ask to see how the port was configured on the host, I only need to see what the device name is and that it is present in the Device Manager - I don't need to see all those white pixels inside the Device Manager window either. Also you could check if JPEG format will give you smaller but still readable files.

Then I need to see the .vbox file to prove that the named host device was assigned to the VM. This file is called "Windows 95.vbox" and can be found in the VM folder ("C:\Users\msre\VirtualBox VMs\Windows 95"). If you don't see that file immediately then turn off the Windows folder option to hide the extension of recognized file types.

p.s. it is bad practice to have a VM referencing a VDI file outside of the VM folder, particularly one located on your host's desktop. That is just begging for trouble, i.e. when you copy the VM folder and forget to copy the HD, or when someone wonders what that desktop file is and deletes it.

[Tom123]

Alright shud be better now and thanks for the tipp.

best regards

Tom

[mpack]

Much better, thank you. Ok, so I agree - your host has a serial port called "COM1", and this is correctly referenced in the VM settings.

What is the "communications error" you get in the guest? Please translate if it's in German.

Do you have the option to try a lower baud rate?

What kind of application is it? I.e. is it 16bit or 32bit? If the latter, have you tried running it in an XP VM? Win95 and XP are both Win32 operating systems, however XP has 32bit device drivers throughout (which VirtualBox is optimized to virtualize, unlike 16bit drivers). Even running NTVDM (16 bit support) on top of XP might work better than running an early 16bit/32bit hybrid such as Win95. Plus XP has access to Guest Additions, which should improve performance in general.

[Tom123]

thank you for your answer mpack

The communication error is not rly usefull it just says "Communication Error".

If have now tried almost every baud rate from 19200 down to 1200. It seems to work better at lower baud rate but still doesent fully connect.
I have somme screenshots from the loading Screen on the VM Win95, it goes to about 80% and then gives me an error.
This Problem is not on the side of the GV3000 Driver of that im 100% sure because I already connected with an old Laptop.

The CS3000 application is a 16-Bit Tool, i tried to install it on the VM WinXP and then i got the following answer. "Failure in 16-Bit-Windows-Programm"
Is there a Driver or tool to avoid that failure?

best regards

Tom

[mpack]

I don't speak German, you need to translate error messages for me - I can't translate graphics very easily. In this case I typed in the German graphical text into Google translate :-

Nicht genügend Arbeitsspeicher, um diese Anwendung zu starten. Schließen Sie mehrere Anwendungen, und wiederholen Sie den Vorgang.
...
Not enough memory to start this application. Close several applications and try again.

The only thing that springs to mind is that this 16-bit application may be looking for a specific 16bit memory manager which is not present in an NT based OS. You could try running it compatibility mode for some earlier version of Windows, e.g. Win95 if that option exists.

[Tom123]

sorry for the missing Translation i tought that it is not important because it is a 16 Bit System on a Windows XP VM.
I did run it on compatibility mode Windows 95.

Win16-Subsystem
C:\DOKUME.................................. One File necessary for initialisation cud not been written or put in place. Make sure that the path excists
and that enough disc space is available. click "Close" to end the application.

thanks a lot

best regards

Tom

[mpack]

That seems like an application error, not an error caused by running the application in a VM. It seems like it is looking in the system temp folder for some file and not finding it there. In fact it seems to be looking in the adminstrator temp folder, which is shouldn't normally expect access to... are you really logged into the adminstrator account?

[Tom123]

No i'm in a account that has admin rights.