[Wine] USB and serial

[Ben Okopnik]

Hello, everyone -

I have an old Windows app - a ship navigation program - that needs to
see GPS input on a serial port (it was written in the pre-USB days.) My
laptop, however, has no serial ports - but this same program, when run
on a friend's Windows box, can read the GPS info from the USB-connected
GPS via the "USB-Serial Driver". This is one of the frustrating bits of
this experience, since a "USB-Serial Driver" under Linux appears to mean
a module which drives a serial-in/USB-out dongle - not at all related to
what I need!

I've got the GPS - two different ones, actually - being recognized by
Linux; in fact, the appropriate modules are being loaded, the
appropriate device (/dev/ttyUSB9) is being created, and the NMEA
sentences are being read (as confirmed by "gpsd -D2 -nN /dev/ttyUSB9".)

My /var/log/messages says:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 31 19:38:16 Tyr kernel: [23431.897090] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support
registered for Garmin GPS usb/tty
Dec 31 19:38:16 Tyr kernel: [23431.897112] garmin_gps 2-2:1.0: Garmin GPS usb/tty converter detected
Dec 31 19:38:16 Tyr kernel: [23431.897215] usb 2-2: Garmin GPS usb/tty converter now attached to ttyUSB9
Dec 31 19:38:16 Tyr kernel: [23431.897226] usbcore: registered new interface driver garmin_gps
Dec 31 19:38:16 Tyr kernel: [23431.897228] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/garmin_gps.c: garmin gps driver v0.31
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan  9 13:38:51 Tyr kernel: [20080.693463] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 3
Jan  9 13:38:51 Tyr kernel: [20080.900226] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jan  9 13:38:53 Tyr kernel: [20083.182714] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support
registered for pl2303
Jan  9 13:38:53 Tyr kernel: [20083.183795] pl2303 1-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
Jan  9 13:38:53 Tyr kernel: [20083.184503] usb 1-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB9
Jan  9 13:38:53 Tyr kernel: [20083.185094] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303
Jan  9 13:38:53 Tyr kernel: [20083.185101] /build/buildd/linux-2.6.24/drivers/usb/serial/pl2303.c: Prolific PL2303 USB to serial
adaptor driver
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

As far as Wine goes, I've got a link in ~/.wine/dosdevices - in fact,
I've created _all_ the com ports that the app recognizes (COM1 through
COM9) and linked them to /dev/ttyUSB9. Unfortunately, there's no joy in
Mudville: the app does not see the data. Even the nice little feature in
its configurator which shows the raw input on any of the com ports is
completely silent.

What could I possibly be missing? Is there any way to troubleshoot those
com ports from inside Wine (perhaps by listening to them with, I dunno,
Hyperterm or something)? Am I mistaken in the whole concept of linking a
USB device to a com port? Any and all suggestions would be highly
appreciated; I've lost many, many hours to beating my head against this
particular brick wall.


-- 
* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *