Hello! Just a note that, pre-Beta, I could not get either of two different model USB serial adapters working so I could use MapSource and my older Garmin GPS V (which has only a serial interface). I failed to get my Keyspan USA-19 to work still, but that might well have been due to OS X claiming it with its own drivers before I could enable it in Parallels. I didn't feel like removing the OS X support and trying again. My IOGear, though, which previously only worked in one direction (or not at all... I can't remember now) finally works as COM3 and I successfully downloaded a full map set. This is a nice trend in the right direction. Unfortunately, it took three or four times as long as it would on my PC or even under VPC back in the day on my G4. Usually it's about a 35 minute process. Today it quoted an hour at the same mac baudrate of 115,200, but the estimate was also wrong and I swear it took half again as long or more. Regardless, it worked without error and continuing to work heavily in OS X in the background proved to not cause it trouble or make OS X pokey. I let it run by itself for a while before moving into the background in OS X to do other things and realizing it was neither faster or slower... so I might as well multi-task. I'd still love to see Parallels utilize USB serial devices as serial ports off the OS X side much like VMWare does and VPC used to do. Plug it in ahead of time, select the active serial device from a list in the VM's config and associate it with a virtual serial port on the guest OS (like COM1). This would widen support even more and eliminate the need for Windows drivers in the guest for the device (and avoid possible fights between it and OS X for who has control of the device). Kudos to Parallels for the progress... Now, if I could only boot off my Boot Camp partition in a VM so I don't have twice as much XP crapping up my beloved MacBook Pro. I do this in Linux with VMWare using the real XP install that can boot the physical machine... really eliminates redundancy. - Aaron
If you have a USB serial adapter (I have a Keyspan), you can try this: http://eudyptes.com/SerialClient.php Thanks to Eudyptes for a great tool to make Parallels talk to serial devices! Now if someone could tell me a trick to get it to work with my Apple USB modem so I could use it to dial from a Door Security app in Windows I'd be set!
Thank you very much, it works fine for me in Windows XP Home Edition with an Ascom Twin 10 (a specific French card reader), a Keyspan USA-19H and Parallels-Desktop-1862. I installed the Mac OS X USB Serial Adapter Drivers and nothing in Windows. USB Controller is set to "Autoconnect off". I load SerialClient click on "Connect" and it works at the specified settings.
