USB to Serial adapter setup

[Dave Yeo]

Have to remember that Arca Noae did some major changes to the USB stack to support XHCI (USB3). Might want to test with Lars's stack, which I think is a lot closer to the stack that IBM released.

I seem to remember that someone said that my USBCOM.SYS hangs the system. I also seem to remember that the AN driver is "fitted" to the AN USB stack as that has turned the inter driver interface to 32-bit and therefore requires the USBCOM.SYS to also have a 32-bit inter driver interface (in other words: they gave up on compatibility and implemented their own proprietary interface).

I think, a ticket to AN is the best choice. If mode.com returns "drive not ready" that likely indicates USBCOM.SYS properly detects the device but fails on the OPEN call or some such. Should be debuggable though.

What I was thinking is that the usbser.sys might play more nice with your stack. Seems it does support Doug's chipset and even David A. suggested trying usbser.sys.
Another question is whether the source for usbser.sys is in the DDK sources. Unluckily I never downloaded the USB sources before IBM removed them.

[Lars]

usbser.sys is contained in the DDK toolkit sources. The DDK sources can be found at multiple places in the internet.

[Roderick Klein]

Have to remember that Arca Noae did some major changes to the USB stack to support XHCI (USB3). Might want to test with Lars's stack, which I think is a lot closer to the stack that IBM released.

I seem to remember that someone said that my USBCOM.SYS hangs the system. I also seem to remember that the AN driver is "fitted" to the AN USB stack as that has turned the inter driver interface to 32-bit and therefore requires the USBCOM.SYS to also have a 32-bit inter driver interface (in other words: they gave up on compatibility and implemented their own proprietary interface).

I think, a ticket to AN is the best choice. If mode.com returns "drive not ready" that likely indicates USBCOM.SYS properly detects the device but fails on the OPEN call or some such. Should be debuggable though.

The 16 bit interface is still present. It was never removed.

Roderick

[Doug Clark]

Follow up on the USB to serial adapter situation, and various questions asked.

I was trying to get a Belkin F5U116 USB to serial adapter to work.  The F5U116 adapter has 2 serial ports, a parallel port and USB hub all in one device -  LSUSB.EXE lists it as two F5U103 serial adapters and one F5U002 Parallel port.  The Belkin F5U109 is an USB to one serial adapter.

The Belkin F5U116 and Belkin F5U109 adapters both use the USBSER.SYS driver. Other USB to serial adapters use a different device driver, USBCOM.SYS.

USBSER.SYS did not work for those two adapters - I believe the reason is after the USB stack was updated (I think for USB 3) USBSER.SYS stopped working.

I submitted a support ticket to AOS and David fixed the USBSER.SYS device driver - at least for those two Belkin adapters.  I have to mention that my experience with AOS support has been outstanding - with this ticket and with other tickets I have submitted.

Now for the other questions and comments people posted:

You list USBCOM.SYS and/or USBSER.SYS once in your CONFIG.SYS file.  You can supply switches (or parameters) to both USBCOM.SYS and USBSER.SYS to specify the maximum number of ports the driver should support, along with the starting port number.  Supplying the starting port number can be important if you have both USBCOM.SYS and USBSER.SYS and or other serial port drivers loaded at the same time - such as COM.SYS or QCOM.SYS.  The device drivers attempt to ascertain the first available com port but can get fooled by other device drivers - see below.

Some time after I started this adventure I picked up an 8 port serial port PCI card made by QuaTech.  QuaTech has OS/2 drivers - they were on the CD that come with the card.  All 8 com ports on the card share a single interrupt and it appears the card negotiates the interrupt to use at boot up.

I also have a serial port built into my ASUS motherboard that can be set in BIOS to either the standard COM1 or COM2 port and interrupt.

I mentioned earlier I had an ACECAT tablet that uses the ACECAD.SYS driver. Martin asked if the driver/tablet will work with the USB to serial adapters.  The answer is no.  It also will not work with the QuaTech 8 port card, and I suspect it is for the same reason.  The ACECAD.SYS driver appears to talk directly to the serial port hardware.  You can specify to the device driver COM1 or COM2 but not the address or interrupt. It also works without COM.SYS being loaded, so it must be talking directly to the port.  But it works fine plugged into the com port  of the motherboard, with or without the QuaTech and/or USB to serial adapters loaded.

I did not see in the QuaTech documentation a way to specify the interrupt for the QuaTech card - but supposedly its driver (QCOM.SYS) can handle the ports on the card and ports on the motherboard, or co-exist with IBM's COM.SYS. 

You can see why it can become necessary to specify the starting port number for each device driver.

I believe there is a limit of 16 com ports for OS/2.

I tested and am using the USB to serial adapters for non modem devices.  I had to add the /DCD switch to the USBSER.SYS and USBCOM.SYS lines in CONFIG.SYS to get my device to work correctly.

Thanks everyone for your help and comments.  And I want to again mention how great Arcae Noae's support system has been for me.

[ivan]

Hi Doug,
Is your ACECAT tablet the same as the ACECAD D-Series digitizer?  If so could you post your ACECAD.SYS driver.

Thanks.

[Doug Clark]

I don't know about the D-series.  The driver works with AceCat III tablet, and the AceCad A1212 tablet.

I have attached the driver, along with some instructions.  My memory is the install fails, or screws up, when making changes to CONFIG.SYS so you really need to manually edit CONFIG.SYS to get the tablet and mouse to work together.  The instructions are in the zip file.

Good luck

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Doug.

Thanks for attaching the driver. I was comparing it to hobbes, and now I have three different version of it uploaded to hobbes. (ACECAD)

Sorry to have more questions.

So, If I get it right you have the following devices:
- Belkin USB to Serial (F5U116 id 050d:0103)
- Belkin USB to Serial Adater (F5U109 id: 050d:0109)
and now also:
- QuaTech 8 port serial port PCI card.


USB to Serial

I tested and am using the USB to serial adapters for non modem devices.  I had to add the /DCD switch to the USBSER.SYS and USBCOM.SYS lines in CONFIG.SYS to get my device to work correctly.

Did you make any of your serial devices to work? Which seria devices did you tested, since the ACECAD do not work?

QuaTech 8 port serial port PCI card
Which model it is? the  ESC-100D or ESC-100M, or some other one?
Here are the ref with the models:  http://web.archive.org/web/20030207224443/http://www.quatech.com/comm_main.htm#pci

Is the QuaTech 8 port serial port PCI card you got working now for your "IBM 6094-20 Lighted Program Function Keyboard (LPFK) " ??
Or you are still trying to make it work?

Regards

[Doug Clark]

At this point I have tested:

- Belkin USB to Serial (F5U116 id 050d:0103)
- Belkin USB to Serial Adater (F5U109 id: 050d:0109)
and
- BENFEI USB to Serial Adapter, USB to RS-232 Male (9-pin) DB9 Serial Cable, Prolific Chipset, PL2303 chip

The BENFEI is a PL2303 chip and works with USBCOM.SYS.  It was $10 on Amazon.  The Belkins work with the updated USBSER.SYS driver.

I have tested them all and they work with my IBM 6094-20 LPFK.  None of them work with the ACECAD tablet.

The QuaTech 8 port serial card I purchased and tested is actually branded by HP.  It is listed as
HP Quatech RoHS 8-port RS-232 Serial 830-3105-00F-G PCI Card with Low Profile Bracket 9052-07092
at  https://www.ebay.com/itm/332629812377.  I am not sure which QuaTech model it is, but I have supplied the model
ESCLP-100 to the driver in CONFIG.SYS and it works.  The driver wants to know which card it is driving and you supply that by a parameter in CONFIG.SYS.  My line reads

DEVICE=c:\os2\boot\qcom.sys (ESCLP-100,2) /L
The ,2 means start at com port 2.

If I am also using one of the USB to serial devices I specify them to start at COM10.  For example
DEVICE=C:\OS2\BOOT\USBSER.SYS  /V /M:2 /N:COM10 /DCD

Which means with this configuration I am currently running with 11 com ports:  COM1 on the motherboard, COM2-COM9 on the QuaTech board, COM10-COM11 on a Belkin USB to Serial adapter.

The QuaTech works with the LPFK; it does not work with the ACEDCAD tablet. 

The document for the QuaTech driver says it works with all Quatech PCI, ISA, Micro Channel and PCMCIA adapters, and will work with chipsets  built into motherboards.  The driver(s) consist of a QCOM.SYS intended to replace IBM's COM.SYS and VQCOM.SYS intended to replace IBMs VCOM.SYS.  The specific models mentioned in the doc are: DSC-100, DSC-200/300, QSC-100, QSC-200/300,  ESC-100D, ESC-100M, SSCLP-100, SSCLP-200/300, DSCLP-100, DSCLP-200/300, QSCLP-100 and QSCLP-200/300

The AceCad tablet does work, but only when connected to the com port on the motherboard. My guess is that is because the driver wants a specific interrupt and address for COM1 or COM2  The ACECAD.SYS driver I have loaded is dated 1-07-98 size 4,227.  I believe I got that off of a floppy that came with the tablet.

I ultimately have 5 serial devices I need to connect and right now it looks like I can connect all 5: 1) IBM 6094-10 Dials,  2) IBM 6094-20 LPFK,  3) ACECad tablet, 4) fax modem, and 5) JV Digital Engineering XTB-232, which is a RS232 to X10 (CM11A protocol)  adapter for X10 home automation.

[Martin Iturbide]

Thanks for the explanation Doug.

I will be including some of this on the OS2World Wiki

I ultimately have 5 serial devices I need to connect and right now it looks like I can connect all 5: 1) IBM 6094-10 Dials,  2) IBM 6094-20 LPFK,  3) ACECad tablet, 4) fax modem, and 5) JV Digital Engineering XTB-232, which is a RS232 to X10 (CM11A protocol)  adapter for X10 home automation.

You have quite a "Serial Monster" there.   

Regards