ProScan - Wine/Linux wiki is dated - unable to connect to any COM

[KC3SNR]

Been running Linux for the last ten years. Holds my network together...
Excited to find out that there is a ProScan installation under wine but the problem is it will cough up and ask for a 32bit prefix and never run or it will run like clockwork and refuse to release COM's - 'the COM port is in use by another instance'- that is listed from COM1 through COM33. Any attempt to use auto config either locks or relist the ports as in use. I've seen several guides on the web but most are dated like the wiki pages. Most recent edit was 2016.
I'm running modern hardware - latest bios and updates... ntm I'm on the latest Linux kernel and firmware.
Due to the research and trial and error... Not sure if wine is installed correctly. I went both ways with install.. apt and software manager. - one is a work around and the other installs 64bit. - 64bit requires you to modify a few directory's and adding a 32bit prefix but it comes back with a ton of errors then tells me that wine was installed correctly. and yes wine runs fine after but still wont release the COM's.
Any and all advice is welcome. Tired of scratching my head.

 

[N8YX]

I've tried installing a few COM-port-supported Windows programs in Wine, PlayOnLinux and CrossOver with very mixed results. The one I did get to work successfully is FT-980 CAT, a 16-bit program for controlling the Yaesu FT-980 transceiver. So far, Spectrum Commander along with the Icom PCR-1000 control program are no-gos, and PuTTY and TeraTerm behave marginally. I may get every 3rd or 4th character to display when running PuTTy or T-T in loopback mode through a serial cable. Funny thing is, when I use 'screen' natively to do the same test, all serial ports in this system (5 total) work flawlessly.

If you have a USB-Serial adapter, try it instead of the native COM hardware. Wine's USB support is supposedly better than that for native serial devices, and you may get pass-through mode working successfully. Would be interesting to hear some feedback about this.

FWIW, the system in use is a Mint Tricia (19.3) flavor of Ubuntu, with the latest updates (5.8 kernel, IIRC).

 

[KC3SNR]

I've tried installing a few COM-port-supported Windows programs in Wine, PlayOnLinux and CrossOver with very mixed results. The one I did get to work successfully is FT-980 CAT, a 16-bit program for controlling the Yaesu FT-980 transceiver. So far, Spectrum Commander along with the Icom PCR-1000 control program are no-gos, and PuTTY and TeraTerm behave marginally. I may get every 3rd or 4th character to display when running PuTTy or T-T in loopback mode through a serial cable. Funny thing is, when I use 'screen' natively to do the same test, all serial ports in this system (5 total) work flawlessly.

If you have a USB-Serial adapter, try it instead of the native COM hardware. Wine's USB support is supposedly better than that for native serial devices, and you may get pass-through mode working successfully. Would be interesting to hear some feedback about this.

FWIW, the system in use is a Mint Tricia (19.3) flavor of Ubuntu, with the latest updates (5.8 kernel, IIRC).

After a ton of reading and installing missing libs and packages.. I'm going to try and purchase a USB programing cable.
I have either a GRE cable or iCOM programming cable from the junk drawer that responded but poorly (Bad cable or incompatible).
Found one on Amazon but didn't want to fork over the $45 just to ship it back the next day.
Going to gather some more intel before I make the purchase.
Kinda makes you nuts.. I'm running Mint 20.* with all the latest kernel and drivers (So happy NVIDIA started playing nice) i7-2600 3.4Ghz 32gb ram. Linux runs everything in the network, all the servers, security etc. But I still need to boot to Winblows 10 to run ProScan.
My end goal was to use ProScan to broadcast over the network so I can use it anywhere on the property.. ie' if I'm on the back of the property in the shop, I can still use the scanner set up in the house on the tram base antenna.
long story short.. I think wine has been installed correctly several times. - BCD436hp dose not like using the provided cable or the cable from my Nikon, GPS or anything else that fit.
then I think to my self that Virtual Box is free and so are windows 7 images but I'm certain this time its not me its a hardware related issue. Virtual Box is a hell of a lot more user friendly when it comes to handing over coms and what not.
I love Linux but there are times it can be its own little Pandora's box

 

[N8YX]

...then I think to my self that Virtual Box is free and so are windows 7 images but I'm certain this time its not me its a hardware related issue. Virtual Box is a hell of a lot more user friendly when it comes to handing over coms and what not.
I love Linux but there are times it can be its own little Pandora's box

There's a thread I started elsewhere in the forum about Optocoms, Spectrum Commander, Windows and the like which gets into much detail about serial-port difficulties with VirtualBox.

In a nutshell: It wasn't until one of the recent beta builds (142946, IIRC) that VirtualBox v6.1 was even usable with serial I/O. It would throw a Serial I/O Open error and choke the VM as soon as you attempted comms through a serial device. That appears fixed, and I ran two instances of ProScan 17.5 in a Win7-32 Pro VM for a number of days without issue; these controlling a -996XT and a -15X simultaneously. Lots of I/O taking place.

Try that same trick with a Win10 Pro VM and the VM will crash after several hours run-time. I'd really like to get Win10 working with stability as it's the only OS which will support the use of a USB-video adapter when run in a VM. I keep both ProScan status panels on a heads-up display over my operating position, same as with a native Win7 system and its secondary monitor, mounted on the same shelf.

FWIW, I ran the same Win10 instance with GRLevel3 earlier in the week and it was stable until I terminated the program (several days) then fired up ProScan. So...something still amiss in the serial world.

VMWare Player looks to handle serial I/O and uptime without issue but you MUST use serial ports native to the motherboard. PCI pass-through simply isn't supported in Player and this is widely known. A USB-Serial device could possibly solve the lack-of-ports problem, but this system is out of USB ports rather than serial devices.

 

[buddrousa]

1. Which scanner
2. Did you power cycle pc
3. Did you power cycle scanner
2 and are required even with windows pc from time to time

 

[N8YX]

...
2. Did you power cycle pc
...
2 and are required even with windows pc from time to time

In one of my previous day jobs, I worked with embedded, I/O intensive products whose purchasers and operators would be quite unhappy if they couldn't get weeks (if not months) of uptime from one of these systems. Platforms were NT4.0 and later derivatives...XP, Win2k, Win7, etc. They were typically taken down only for patching or upgrading the application stack.

In another role at same employer, datacenter activities routinely saw servers kept online for months to years between reboots, depending on the operational constraints placed on them. Unless there's a severe bug in the operating system which renders it unstable (e.g, a memory heap leak), there's no reason for a Windows system (especially a server platform) to require regular reboots. Likewise, there's no reason a misbehaving application should take the entire OS stack down with it if the system's event handler is working properly (no bugs).

We've come a long way since the Win95 daze, platform-wise.

 

[buddrousa]

I run proscan on windows 7 8 and 10 boxes for years and have we have to do this. I offered help weather you decided to take it or not is up to you.
Uniden has known problems with serial drivers in the 996p2 and wifi drivers in the 536.

 

[N8YX]

Buggy 3rd party device driver != buggy operating system.

I'd take the matter up with Uniden. Rather loudly. I can say that if this was happening with a large commercial customer (rather than a group of hobbyists) the problem would get addressed most ricky-tick. This is something I'm VERY (like, kernel-level) familiar with in said previous role.

 

[buddrousa]

Good luck been this way since release
Plus proscan is not supported other than windows