Sharing a com port across a network

  • Thread starter Thread starter Blankman
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Blankman

I've got a good one for ya. We're running a sign software on one machine
(machine A) that connects to a cutting machine via the COM port. This
machine is connected to another machine (machine B) by a crossover cable so
we can share files and hopefully cutting functions. The machine the cutter
is connected to (machine A) doesn't have the cutter installed as a printer
but rather the software actually looks for the connection at the com port
and loads the drivers upon being opened. Is there a way to share a com port
on machine A so I can tell my software on machine B that the cutter is
connected remotely?

Thanks for any insight you can provide.
 
COM Ports cannot be shared. You would need to create and run a program
on the machine with the COM port with which a remote machine could
communicate and to which the instructions for the cutting machine
could be transferred acoss the network.


I've got a good one for ya. We're running a sign software on one machine
(machine A) that connects to a cutting machine via the COM port. This
machine is connected to another machine (machine B) by a crossover cable so
we can share files and hopefully cutting functions. The machine the cutter
is connected to (machine A) doesn't have the cutter installed as a printer
but rather the software actually looks for the connection at the com port
and loads the drivers upon being opened. Is there a way to share a com port
on machine A so I can tell my software on machine B that the cutter is
connected remotely?

Thanks for any insight you can provide.
Click to expand...


Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher
 
How would I create such a program?

Peter R. Fletcher said:
COM Ports cannot be shared. You would need to create and run a program
on the machine with the COM port with which a remote machine could
communicate and to which the instructions for the cutting machine
could be transferred acoss the network.





Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher


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In the computer language of your choice! It would not be a trivial
application.

Another approach would be to modify the original cutter driver
application to allow sequences of instructions to be written to a file
and subsequently read back in and sent to the cutter when needed.
Depending on exactly how the application works and is designed this
might not be quite such a big deal to code. With this approach, you
would run the application in "write to file mode" on the remote
machine, transfer the instruction file across the network to the
machine with the cutter attached, and then run the application in
"live mode" from the file.

I don't think that there is a solution to your problem that does not
require access to the source of the cutter driver application and a
substantial amount of programming.

How would I create such a program?


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Peter R. Fletcher
 
Well that's not what I wanted to hear.

Thanks for your help though!
Buster

Peter R. Fletcher said:
In the computer language of your choice! It would not be a trivial
application.

Another approach would be to modify the original cutter driver
application to allow sequences of instructions to be written to a file
and subsequently read back in and sent to the cutter when needed.
Depending on exactly how the application works and is designed this
might not be quite such a big deal to code. With this approach, you
would run the application in "write to file mode" on the remote
machine, transfer the instruction file across the network to the
machine with the cutter attached, and then run the application in
"live mode" from the file.

I don't think that there is a solution to your problem that does not
require access to the source of the cutter driver application and a
substantial amount of programming.




Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher


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AKA... I don't have a clue! ;-)
Click to expand...

On the contrary! I have written low-level drivers for various bits of
hardware under a number of OSes in the past. It could be done, but I
didn't think that this approach was likely to be helpful to the OP,
hence my offhand answer.

Please respond to the Newsgroup, so that others may benefit from the exchange.
Peter R. Fletcher
 
You can use a program called TCPCom to shzre COM ports across a
network.
TCPCom is a utility that is designed to expose a serial port to a
TCP/IP port on a network and it can also create "Virtual COM ports"
that are really connections to a TCP/IP port.
To share a serial port across a network, you would run TCPCom as a
TCP/IP server opening up the physical COM port on the PC where the
device is connected to the serial port that you want to share.
In that same PC you would run another instance of TCPCom and set it up
to create a "Virtual COM port" that connects as a TCP/IP client to the
first instance of TCPCom (the server instance).
You could then run TCPCom on other workstations in the same network
and configure TCPCom to connect as a TCP/IP client to the "server
instance" running in the PC where the device is connected to the COM
port and also have it create a Virtual COM port.

The Server instance of TCPCom will allow multiple client connections
therfore you will be able to share the same physical COM port with as
many workstations as you like and have all of them be able to
communicate over the same physical COM port simultaneously.

You would then run your serial communications software on both PCs and
instead of opening the real COM ports, you would open the Virtual COM
ports instead.
You can download a fully functional demo copy of TCPCom from the
following web page:
http://www.taltech.com/products/tcpcom.html

More detailed instructions on how to share com ports with TCPCom can
be found in the on-line help for the program.
 
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