Hey everyone. I have a rare question. I purchased an adapter that goes from a usb port to a serial port. This device came with a driver to do this function in windows. My problem with this is that I need this device to work in dos. I can only use windows98 or earlier bootdisks. Windows cannot be opened at all for my purpose. So my question is. How would i make a windows 98 bootdisk run this device? Or how would i enable the usb port, then convert it a serial port with the drivers i have. Any ideas??? I have also uploaded a picture of this device.

Thanks
Chris

Hi Chris,

Welcome to PCHF. We have a wonderful team of techs here, and I know we will be able to figure out something.

It would probably be more helpful if you gave us a clearer picture of what it was exactly that you are trying to do.

What the specs are on your machine.

What USB device is it that you are trying to run in DOS?

Why is it that you need the device to work in DOS?

The more information you can give us the better the chance are that we can come up with some clever work around.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Ok let me start from the beggining. I work for Panera Bread's IT department. We use a program called xu2000 to access the database and application on our registers. This program can only be run on a version of windows that doesn't run on the NT kernal(windows me or earlier (i hate ME)) This program utilizes the serial port on a computer to access the information. My laptop(HP Pavillion ZE 5478 CL) did not come with a serial port. So I bought the below adapter. This adapter came with a driver. I am trying to use a boot disk and this device to make the program xu2000 see this as a serial port so that i can use my laptop to support these registers. Any help you could give me would be great. Is there anything else that you may need to know?

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the additional information, that helps alot. Have you considered installing 98se as a second OS on the laptop. I think you would have a lot more success running the driver from Windows rather than DOS.

Let me bring in a couple of my collegues on this, they may actually have experience with some of the software you are dealing with.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

From what I understand from my boss, and the others in my department across the US this program won't run in windows. I had considered this option. If I were to do this how would I make windows xp recognize the dual boot? Would I have to update the bios settings?

Has anyone made any progress on figuring out this solution. If not I guess it's ok, seeing as the adapter was only .01 plus shipping. If there is no way of accomplishing what i want to do with what I have does anyone know if there is a way to do it? Or is there possibly a pcmia card that has a serial port?