I am trying to make Norton Commander 5.5 on an OLD 80286 DOS 6.22 box (Tulip LT286. I am actually still using this 30+ years old laptop almost daily to communicate with satellites in earth orbit via the COM port>TNC>transceiver.) that has no USB, ISA or PCI and only one COM port communicate with another Norton Commander 5.5 that is in a DOSBox 0.74 on an Ubuntu 18.04.2LTS machine. I cannot get a connection using the Link feature in NC.
To do that I use a serial nullmodem cable. I tested with a third machine that has DOSBox 0.74-2 on Windows 10 Pro and that works great (I set Windows COM1 to 38400.). So the DOS end of this setup is tested and works and it also confirms that Norton Commander works fine in a DOSBox, at least if its running on Windows 10 Pro. Also the nullmodem cable is tested in this windows<>DOS test setup so all that is working ok.
The only difference is the Ubuntu machine. I tested with a serial mouse and the correct com port is working and its ttyS0. I redirected the serial port to /dev/ttyS0 and the DOSBox terminal says" Serial1: Opening ttyS0" so that seems ok too. I am member of group dialout and everybody (777) has access to /dev/ttyS0. sudo stty -F /dev/ttyS0 returns "speed 38400 baud; line = 0;"
I am at a loss, does anyone have any tips to debug this?
Problem found.
After I put two paperclips in the left upper and middle upper port of the nullmodem cable connector and put them in my mouth (with one hand over the keyboard) i found there was no data.
Faulty cable
A new cable and test confirms there is data now. When i send data in cutecom my teeth rattle and hands shake entering the data.
I started up both Norton Commanders and it works like a charm now.
(Faulty cable thrown into garbage bin.)