[Coco] Drivewire 4 having trouble detecting my serial port

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 11:51 PM, Fred D. Provoncha
<fredprov5 at usfamily.net> wrote:
> On 5/14/2012 2:28 AM, coco-request at maltedmedia.com wrote:
>>
>> From: Christopher Hawks <chawks at dls.net> Subject: Re: [Coco] Drivewire 4
>> having trouble detecting my serial port To: CoCoList for Color Computer
>> Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com> Message-ID: <4FB03C37.9000009 at dls.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Fred D.
>> Provoncha said the following on 05/13/2012 05:05 PM:
>>>
>>> I'm trying to set up Drivewire 4 on my Ubuntu Linux laptop to communicate
>>> with
>>> my Coco. I'm running the Drivewire 4 configuration program on my Ubuntu
>>> 12.04
>>> Linux laptop. The laptop does not have a built-in serial port, so I'm
>>> using a
>>> USB-Serial adapter to connect it to my real Coco 3. According to my
>>> system, the
>>> adapter is being assigned to port "ttyUSB0". But within the Drivewire 4
>>> setup
>>> program, underneath where it says "Drivewire has detected the following
>>> ports:"
>>> nothing shows up. Further down, it asks, "If Drivewire does not detect
>>> your
>>> serial port, you can enter the name below". I then type in "/dev/ttyUSB0"
>>> in
>>> the space provided and then click "Add Port". A message then appear
>>> saying:
>>> "/dev/ttyUSB0 This port does not exist". I know for a fact it does exist
>>> however, as it appears in the /dev directory in my Linux file system. Any
>>> ideas?
>>
>> Fred:
>>
>>        Do you have permission to access the port??
>>
>> When first created, mine showed up with permissions:
>>
>> HAWKSoft(chrish)$ ls -l /dev/ttyUSB0
>> crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 2009-01-03 17:07 /dev/ttyUSB0
>> (usable by root and owner uucp)
>>
>> I had to change it to:
>>
>> crw-rw-rw- 1 root uucp 188, 0 2009-01-03 17:07 /dev/ttyUSB0
>> (usable by root, owner uucp, and everyone)
>>
>> Then I could use it.
>>
>
> Thanks Chris, Stephen, Aaron for your help, apparently changing the
> permissions on the /dev/ttyUSB0 file did have an effect. Drivewire can now
> recognize ttyUSB0. However, I'm not quite there yet. I ran into another,
> possibly related problem.
>
> After getting Drivewire to recognize ttyUSH0, I proceeded with the
> configuration program. I get to the part where the program asks me to
> connect the cable to the Coco and turn it on. Drivewire then listens for a
> code to be transmitted to Drivewire through the cable from the Serial Port
> on the Coco when it's turned on in order to test the connection. Well,
> Drivewire never receives the signal and it times out. Four possibilities
> come to mind:
>
> 1) Cable not connected properly.
> 2) Cable is defective/damaged.
> 3) The Serial I/O port on the Coco is defective/damaged.
> 4) Some other possibility I haven't thought of.
>
> I'm pretty sure #1 isn't the issue. I verified all my connections and
> everything looks snug & correct. I don't think it's #2 since a close
> inspection of the cable does not reveal any evidence of any defect or
> damage. I suppose #3 could be the cause, but I have no way of testing it.
> The port doesn't look damaged from the outside but that doesn't mean
> anything. I certainly hope it's not #3 as I have limited means to make any
> repair. I'm really hoping it's #4. Anybody have any other ideas as to what
> might be causing this?
>

One possibility is that DW isn't able to set the proper parameters on
the port.  This can happen for a few reasons, rare but possible.  To
see if this has happened, just finish the wizard without doing the
test and then look in the server tab for errors.  There are actually
some other things that would show up there, so a good place to look.
Another possibility is that my test just isn't quite right, or your
coco sends a value I have not seen before on power up.  In that case,
it might work just fine despite failing the wizard's test.
Worth a shot to just pretend it worked and insert a disk, do a DIR.