Mimic Windows Com ports with Visa Server

[MrQuestion]

I have a com port on a PXIe-8108 with LabVIEW RT running Visa Server.

I have a PC attached to the 8108 controller via Ethernet with Visa Server running on the PC.

I have configured MAX to allow access the Visa Server on both systems.

In LabVIEW when I do a search for all Visa resources on the PC I can see serial port on the controller.

I can also send messages via Visa without any issue.

My problem is that I have older third party programs that need to access this serial port, but the do not use Visa. Instead they look at the windows com ports to dertimine what ports are available. For example the classic HyperTerm.

HyperTerm only sees windows com ports, and not any of the Visa resources.

Is there a program out there or a trick that I can do that will emulate the windows com ports on a PC and translate any com trafic to a a visa resource on the Visa Server?

[Eric-J]

By LabVIEW RT, do you mean Real Time?  It sounds like you are trying to access a com port on your controller by using a third party program running on a PC, correct?

[MrQuestion]

Yes, that is correct.

I want to use the com port on my PXI-8108 that is running LabVIEW Real TIme from a different PC that is running Windows XP.

I can do this successfully if I write a program on Windows XP based off of Visa Aliases.

Essentially I want to see my Visa Aliases look like a COM port on my Windows XP machine.

[margasan]

Hello Mr. Question,

To be honest I think that it will be possible to do that but it will require a lot of work, as you will have to create a program in LabVIEW that will create a virtual COM port on your windows device manager and connet it to the PXI XOM port using the network.

Regards

Mart G

[MrQuestion]

I'm not afraid of a little work. I have seen products that have multiple COM ports on a ethernet device and on the windows machine it just appears as multiple COM ports.  (This is after you install the products client software)

I have also seen several USB to Serial adapters that appear as a standard COM device in windows, but only after the software is installed.

So, I know it is possible to mimic a COM port and act like a data gateway to another standard. In my case I want to mimic a Windows COM port and have a local gateway software that will take that data stream into a VISA reference. Once the data stream is pointed to a VISA reference I can let Visa Server do rest of the work for me.

I have a team of C# and LabVIEW programmers available to help me with this.  But, we can't seem to find anything describing how to trick windows into having aditional COM ports.

If somebody could possible point us in the right direction.

Thank you

[margasan]

Hello Mr. Question,

What about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_port_redirector

However you  maay search for tutorials about the creation of virtual COM ports

Regards

Mart G

[MrQuestion]

I will look into this. There seems to be several good leads in that wiki.

Thank you.

I'll let you know how this ends up.