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Use a Keyspan USB-to-Serial adapter with Virtual Box Apps
Sun's VirtualBox is a slick new virtualization alternative to VMWare Fusion, Parallels, and the like. For some of us, we not only need to run a Windows app, but that app requires a connection to a serial device. Here's what I did just now to get my Keyspan USA-19HS USB-to-Serial adapter working in VirtualBox under Windows XP:
  1. Windows XP installed without a hitch, but it had no COM ports set up. It turns out that I hadn't turned them on in VirtualBox, so I did that.
  2. Installed the Keyspan drivers on my Mac (Leopard, 10.5.4).
  3. Downloaded SerialClient, the excellent app that seems to make this work.
  4. Attached the Keyspan adapter.
  5. In XP, I went into the Add Hardware wizard, and scrolled down to the bottom to add hardware I pick from a list. Basically, I wanted to force XP to set up an item in Device Manager for a COM port. The device was created, but for some reason, it ended up being a COM3, IRQ4, at address 3F8 (this is important in a moment).
  6. In VirtualBox, I then edited Serial Ports in the Settings area of my virtual machine. After enabling Port 1, I set the Port Number drop-down to User-defined, and set it to IRQ 4, 3F8 as above. Port Mode is Host Pipe. Finally, put a checkmark in the box labeled Create Pipe, and enter path of /tmp/serial without the quotes. Click OK to exit.
  7. Now, finally, run the SerialClient software downloaded above. Make the stream path /tmp/serial, just as above. Select your serial port KeySerial1. Baud Rade is 115200 and defaults on the rest.
  8. Restart Windows XP, and while it's coming up, go ahead and click Conncect in SerialClient.
Windows now seems just fine with the COM3 I created -- there's no yellow "!" in device manager, and the Keyspan adapter LED is solid green. I then tested the adapter in my windows app and indeed, the serial connection is working! I am using Windows XP Pro as my guest OS, so, unless you are set up the same, the exact steps may differ somewhat.

[robg adds: This same method (or a slight variant of it) should work using Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion. VirtualBox is a very good (and free!) virtualization solution for OS X; I gave a brief overview of its abilities in my most-recent Macworld video.]
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Use a Keyspan USB-to-Serial adapter with Virtual Box | 3 comments | Create New Account
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Use a Keyspan USB-to-Serial adapter with Virtual Box
Authored by: ehunt123 on Jul 29, '08 08:48:48AM

The Keyspan adapters are known to work well with non-Windows environments. In addition, there are many other adapters that tend to work with OSX and Linux, but no list is complete nor available. Here are some tips that might seem common but are good strategies if you have an adapter and want to get it working on the Mac or are looking to purchase one:

First, you need to find the chipset inside of the adapter. This is the critical thing since I have yet to see anyone who builds their own. From what I recall, most adapters use the same two or three chipsets found in the popular and working ones like Keyspan and IOGear.

Second, take the chipset name and run it via Google. You might come up on a few SourceForge Projects working on creating Linux and OSX drivers for those adapters. Both list a sample of the products they are in, but might not be complete. If I know that the Keyspan and IOGear contain the "Prolific" chipset that powers the majority of these and that it has both drivers and success reported from some reading.

If this is not known or you cannot identify it because it is not listed, I would run the product name and number through Google. This could point you in a good direction or provide the information needed in order to get a working driver.



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Use a Keyspan USB-to-Serial adapter with Virtual Box
Authored by: olivermomo on Jul 29, '08 10:26:59AM

> This same method (or a slight variant of it) should work using Parallels
> Desktop and VMware Fusion.

The hint above is unnecessary for VMware Fusion. In VMware Fusion, just install the Windows drivers for the Keyspan USB-to-Serial adaptor and configure as you would on a PC.



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Use a Keyspan USB-to-Serial adapter with Virtual Box
Authored by: caver01 on Jul 30, '08 11:24:05PM

I would love to just run the Keyspan drivers in the guest OS (XP on my VirtualBox install) but I could never get VB to "hand over" the keyspan USB. ACTUALLY, I could never get OSX to ignore the adapter. As soon as I plugged it in, some driver would load and I could not pass it through to XP. If anyone has ideas about how to pull this off, I'd love to hear about it. According to keyspan docs I read, if you unload the mac drivers you should be able to grab it in a guest OS, but that did not work for me. VM kept saying the device was not available or something when I tried to pass the USB over to the guest OS. Very frustrating.



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