Hello,
We're developing an Embedded Windows XP appliance for which we wish to allow
direct serial access (for example, from a VT100 terminal connected to COM1)
to a custom application that we're writing. What's the best way to go about
configuring Windows XP (or writing our application) to support this?
Our end goal is a usage scenario as follows:
- a user connected via the appliance's serial interface alerts system (e.g.,
via BREAK, or perhaps Ctrl-Alt-Del, or whatever) that they wish to use it
- our application, running under a previously configured/designated acount,
is invoked by some XP Embedded mechanism to then control I/O to and from
that
serial interface; the user is NOT required to supply an XP username/password
- our application then interacts with the user to perform various
maintenance
operations for the appliance (e.g., configuring network settings, examining
log files, upgrading software, etc.)
- eventually the application will exit, with the system then ready to accept
another usage request on the associated serial interface
I've heard suggestions of perhaps using RAS, or maybe a serial driver, with
Windows XP Embedded. The latter sounds too low level, though I must confess
to knowing little about either option (or any others for that matter!).
Note that we are NOT seeking a connection via a serial networking protocol
such as PPP/SLIP. Instead, we want a simple serial terminal connection like
legacy timesharing systems supported in years past.
FYI, by way of comparison, on a UNIX system we could configure the system to
have 'getty' start our application whenever a BREAK or similar hardware
event
was received on a designated port, and write the application to simply read
and write the standard input and output streams that correspond to that
serial communication port. The means to invoke our application for activity
on the serial interface is simply a configuration task, requiring us to do
no
programming, and our application need not get directly involved with any
low-level I/O APIs.
Our application is currently written in Java, if that matters. We're hoping
we can "hook in" our application using some simple configuration effort on
Windows XP (like on UNIX), so that the details of the application need not
matter. Other portions of our appliance are currently written in J# and C#.
Also note that we are currently prototyping our appliance using XP Pro
rather
than XP Embedded. It would be nice to find a solution that works on both,
but if there's a simple solution that only works with XP Embedded, that's
ok.
I look forward to whatever advice, pointers, etc. you can offer.
Thanks in advance,
Dan S.
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