Hi... I am setting up a NMEA2000 marine instrumentation bus for use on my boat. The interface to my Mac is through an Actisense NGT-1 gateway, which, in essence, is a USB-serial interface with extra stuff on the NMEA2000 side. I have installed the Mac driver, which is proven to work with the main Mac chart plotting software MacENC. So the driver is proven.
The management software from Actisense is PC only, so I am trying to use CrossOver to get this working, but have had no luck getting it to recognise the USB/serial port. I have followed the advice from CodeWeavers at http://www.codeweavers.com/support/wiki/FAQ/SerialOverUSB. I can see the new entries in the /dev directory which appear when the device is plugged in:
[b]$ ls -l /dev | grep "usb"
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 10, 13 21 Dec 23:48 cu.usbserial-1B0D4
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 10, 12 21 Dec 23:48 tty.usbserial-1B0D4[/b]
so they are there and owned by root & wheel.
I have added links from the CrossOver dosdevices directory as instructed, and now have:
[b]$ ls -l
total 80
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 24 22 Dec 20:58 COM1 -> /dev/tty.usbserial-1B0D4
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 10 22 Dec 09:21 c: -> ../drive_c
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 20 22 Dec 20:59 d: -> /Volumes/xxxxxxx
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 13 22 Dec 09:21 d:: -> /dev/rdisk2s2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 23 22 Dec 20:59 e: -> /Volumes/Backup of Carl
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 13 22 Dec 09:46 e:: -> /dev/rdisk3s2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 20 27 Dec 14:28 f: -> /Volumes/xxxxxxx
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 13 27 Dec 14:28 f:: -> /dev/rdisk1s2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 11 22 Dec 09:21 y: -> /Users/Tony
lrwxr-xr-x 1 Tony 502 1 22 Dec 09:21 z: -> /[/b]
[NB I have also tried com1 in lower case and com2, com3, com4 etc.]
However, the Actisense NMEA Reader software shows no devices in its pull-down list of serial ports.
Actisense tell me NMEA Reader uses the Windows API to ask for a list of available serial ports. So it does not just try and open com1, but asks which serial ports are available. It seems not to find any, and it is not clear to me how it should, unless it searches the directory for devices starting com*. It seems to me that it may be necessary for Windows to be told of the existence of a serial port - sort of registering the port - and it is not clear to me that adding the link in the dosdevices directory is sufficient.
It is important to me to get this working as I plan to add other hardware such as a Garmin AIS600 transponder that also has a USB interface for control purposes and PC-only software. So any help or advice would be really really appreciated.
Best wishes for 2011 to one and all, Tony
