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Mitchell Skurnik
Asked: 2012-05-28 17:36:39 +0800 CST

RDP ts port redirection

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I have 2 pairs of serial devices (a scale and a POS pin pad) hooked up to 2 pcs (4 serial devices in total) with windows xp embedded sp3 (x86) running RDC/rdp 6.0. I am using those machines to RDP into virtual machines running Windows 7 enterprise (x64) where my point of sale software is installed. I need to redirect the local PC's com ports (com1 and com2) over to the virtual machine. I configured the rdp file to send the com ports and it does as I can see the ports if I add a printer (they show up as ts033 and ts034) but the software I am using requires it be called com1 - com10. I have tried to use "net use com3:\device\com1, net use com3:\tsclient\ts033" and a few other combos on my VM to redirect the ts com port to a "real/virtual" one.

I don't have the money to spend on purchasing a serial server (new or used) or purchase the amount of licenses/seats for 3rd party software. Even the cheapest solution from ebay to purchase 4 new serial servers comes out to about $100 plus you have to use 4 wall warts and it involves extra cabling.

My only other option is to get 8 db9 to rj-45 adapters and send this over 4 existing cat5e lines and physically attach them to the vm server. I'd rather avoid having to do this as again it requires running extra cables from the POS terminal/pc as well as running cables from the patch panel to the VM server. I would much rather use the net use method if you could tell me how or some other free/opensource software that is out there.

Let me know if you need any other information or if something is unclear.

windows networking rdp serial windows-terminal-services

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    So after searching a bit more I came across a rather random domain name that had the answer. Over at http://www.GoodJobSucking.com/?p=214 (yes I too was hesitant to click on that link) the blog post describes how to use com0com (which is an open source application) to transmit a com port from one computer to another using a TCP connection.

    I only found this out after I pinned and wired a set of db9 to rj45 cables and attached it directly to my server. The server was able to see the data from the scale but Hyper-V apparently does not provide physical access to the com ports on the server. I have no idea why but after doing some digging and finally searching for "hyperv named pipe com port" on Bing, the 3rd link was what I was looking for.

    Here are the steps that I took:

    Host Computer / Old computer (x86)

    • I downloaded hub2com from http://sf.net/projects/com0com/files/ and extracted it to C:\ComPorts\
    • I then launched command prompt and ran com2tcp-rfc2217 com1 1000 (I will end up doing the same for com2 and make that use 2000)
    • That will launch a debug session. You can choose to keep this active or run a posh or vbs script that runs this in the background but I like having it visible to ensure that data is transferring.
    • I am now ready to transmit data to my virtual machine

    Virtual Machine (x64)

    • I downloaded com0com from http://sf.net/projects/com0com/files/ and installed it on the machine
    • When the install was complete I check the "launch setup" box and hit next.
    • In the command prompt window I then typed "install EmuBR=yes EmuBR=yes" hit enter then typed "change CNCA0 PortName=COM1" and hit enter. This is now setup so I closed the window.
    • The next step is downloading the x64 compiled version of hub2com found in the blog post linked above and extracting that again to C:\ComPorts.
    • I then launched command prompt again and entered "com2tcp-rfc2217 \.\CNCB0 RemoteHostName 1000" (replacing RemoteHostName with the hostname of my old machine) and hit enter.
    • Again this launched a debug session and let me see the data flowing in.

    At this point I attached my Point of Sale scale (a CAS PD-II) to the host's com1 serial port and placed something on the scale. Instantly I see data flowing in via the command prompt window and the POS software saw the weight.

    I really hope that this saves someone weeks of trying to get this to work like I did.

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