I am using XP under VM Ware Player using Windows 10. I run a DOS program under XP. The program uses 4 serial ports. If I use DEBUG I can see that 4 ports exist at 40:0 (COM1=3F8, COM2=2F8, COM3=3E8, COM4=2E8). So I shut down XP and configured the settings with 4 serial ports, each with a named pipe. The pipe names are .pipecom_1, 2, 3 and 4. For the Named Pipe dialog I have set it to 'This end is the server' and 'The other end is an application'. And 'connect at power on'.

1. Parallel Port

Parallel Port

But when I run the program I get a popup that says 'The system cannot open COM3 port requested by the application'. Then if I click Ignore it gives the same message except for COM4. Note that COM1 and 2 work just fine via the named pipe. My program works on a real DOS using COM1,2,3,4.

I had this problem with earlier versions of VmWare but always thought it was a bug in VmWare. So I updated to the latest Player so now I think there is something I don't understand. Primalforms community edition tutorial jilbab.

Note: When I click on the Serial Port settings I see a message that says 'Virtual printers must be enabled in the preferences'. I don't know why because I'm not using a printer but I enabled it anyway. I get the same problem.

You can add up to four serial (COM) ports to a virtual machine. Virtual serial ports can output to physical serial ports, files, or named pipes. You might want to add a virtual serial port to a virtual machine to make devices such as modems and printers available to the virtual machine. A virtual machine in VMware Player can use up to four serial (COM) ports. They can be configured to send output to physical serial ports, files, or named pipes. Here is how you can add a virtual serial port to a virtual machine in VMware Player: 1. Power off the virtual machine. Under the serial port that you want to configure, click Physical computer serial port, and then click to clear the Wait for modem command to open port check box. Click Named pipe, and then type. Pipe name that you want to assign to the named pipe in the Named pipe box. For example, type. Pipe com2 and Click OK.

Can someone please help me?

I have a device that I need to program through a serial port. The problem is my laptop doesn't a serial port. I do however have a serial-to-USB cable that I can plug in. I can then set it to use COM1.
So to program the device in question I have to boot to a floppy drive and run the programming application in a DOS environment. In order for the serial-to-USB cable driver to work I have to have Windows running. To work around this problem I thought I could use a virtual machine in Hyper-V or VirtualBox that could map a serial port to a named pipe. Here's where I'm getting confused.
It would seem like what I need to do is somehow serve my COM1 port to a named pipe on my laptop. I could then point the virtual machine to that named pipe. I see how to point the virtual machine to a named pipe. I just don't see how to 'serve' that named pipe from my laptop. I've read around about creating named pipes and such, but I still don't see how to map my COM1 port to the named pipe so I can then in turn connect to it with a virtual machine.
Is this possible to do? Is my thought process flawed?