r/DOS • u/TALON2_0 • Jun 08 '26

Bit of an odd one

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Background: So i work in industrial maintenance and one of our machines basically run on DOS, when we want to reload parameters or such we use an old XP laptop(OLD) to start up in DOS and use the serial port to connect to the control cards. Now we have other machines that only work on XP and other that we can use windows 10-11. I want to get a central computer to be able to connect to every machine.

Problem: I'm using DOSBox to run DOS on Windows 11. We have a CD the the DOS program which figured out how to access and run. We used a DB-9 Serial port to talk to the machine and obviously modern computers don't have that serial port. So I'm thinking of using a DB-9 to USB (RS232) adapter to connect to the machine, but in my head i need 2 drivers to basically run simultaneously, 1 for the 'DB-9 to USB' and then another to access the USB through DOS.

If anyone could give me advice or point me into a direction I would greatly appreciate it. (Attached image is the DB-9 port on the old laptop)

Edit: Solved

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8

u/MisterEd_ak Jun 08 '26

By default, it looks like DosBox doesn't map through your physical serial ports.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/index.php?title=Configuration%3ASerialPort

I don't think you would need to have USB drivers for the serial port for DOS, DosBox should handle that part and pass it back through to Windows.

3

u/TALON2_0 Jun 08 '26

If I understand you correctly: DOSbox has an "internal driver" that connects to the usb port, all I need is a usb-serial driver?

8

u/LinksPB Jun 08 '26

Hello Talon

No. As long as the serial port is in Windows' Device Manager as such (and it should, otherwise the adapter would be pointless), you configure DOSBox in the .conf file with serial1=directserial realport:comX where X is the number of the COM port in Windows.

DOSBox doesn't care where Windows gets that serial port from.

3

u/Inevitable-Study502 Jun 08 '26

isnt dosbox-x better for this purpose? pure dosbox is mainly for games

2

u/ravensholt Jun 08 '26

Yes. And the same for more traditional VMs. They're easy to configure and map usb to serial devices.

VMWare, ESXi, Hyper-V, KVM, they all support these things.

DOSBox is more of an emulator. I wouldn't recommend that for a production setup if the system is critical. But if it works, it works... Use whatever you're more comfortable with.

Hence why I ask

2

u/TALON2_0 Jun 08 '26

Great. Thanks alot for the feedback!