Megatron-uk
Experienced Member
I'm playing around with SCO Xenix within Virtualbox at the moment and have hit a bit of a problem with serial ports.
Other than floppies, really the only way to get content in and out of the vm is via the emulated serial ports - so I'm using the well documented technique of used named pipes within Virtualbox as the virtual serial ports, so that serial/terminal emulation tools within the host can talk to the guest OS as if they were attached via serial/null-modem cable.
However, Xenix appears to be *really* flaky when sending or receiving data via this method.
I have managed to get a version of c-Kermit onto the Xenix vm, and have run "mkdev serial" to build the serial port devices (/dev/tty1a and /dev/tty2a).
Setting c-kermit to 9600 in both the Xenix guest and the host (Linux), but whenever I try to send or get from *either* side, the Xenix machine spits out:
"Garbage or loose cable on serial dev 0, port shut down"
I've also done a 'enable /dev/tty1a' to allow login terminals via the first serial port, and the login prompt shows when I access the serial port from Linux, but after entering username and password I get a hung connection after a short number of commands (eg a single 'ls' is enough to trigger it) and the 'Garbage or loose cable...' message on the Xenix console.
So, the emulated serial connection works - as evidenced by the login and password prompt appearing at the 'other end', ie in Linux, but sending or receiving more than a few bytes of data appears to cause Xenix to flake out.
I did find very old postings about a fix for that 'Garbage or loose cable....' error, but it was only applicable to versions of Xenix prior to 2.3.2 (and not 2.3.2 itself, which is what I am using), I even tried installing the patch anyway, but it errors out with a 'not for this version' message.
Anyone got a working Xenix 286 system in a virtual machine and can try the serial ports?
Other than floppies, really the only way to get content in and out of the vm is via the emulated serial ports - so I'm using the well documented technique of used named pipes within Virtualbox as the virtual serial ports, so that serial/terminal emulation tools within the host can talk to the guest OS as if they were attached via serial/null-modem cable.
However, Xenix appears to be *really* flaky when sending or receiving data via this method.
I have managed to get a version of c-Kermit onto the Xenix vm, and have run "mkdev serial" to build the serial port devices (/dev/tty1a and /dev/tty2a).
Setting c-kermit to 9600 in both the Xenix guest and the host (Linux), but whenever I try to send or get from *either* side, the Xenix machine spits out:
"Garbage or loose cable on serial dev 0, port shut down"
I've also done a 'enable /dev/tty1a' to allow login terminals via the first serial port, and the login prompt shows when I access the serial port from Linux, but after entering username and password I get a hung connection after a short number of commands (eg a single 'ls' is enough to trigger it) and the 'Garbage or loose cable...' message on the Xenix console.
So, the emulated serial connection works - as evidenced by the login and password prompt appearing at the 'other end', ie in Linux, but sending or receiving more than a few bytes of data appears to cause Xenix to flake out.
I did find very old postings about a fix for that 'Garbage or loose cable....' error, but it was only applicable to versions of Xenix prior to 2.3.2 (and not 2.3.2 itself, which is what I am using), I even tried installing the patch anyway, but it errors out with a 'not for this version' message.
Anyone got a working Xenix 286 system in a virtual machine and can try the serial ports?
