Am Sun, 19 Mar 2017 09:57:22 +0100 schrieb tu...@posteo.de: > On 03/19 09:37, Kai Krakow wrote: > > Am Sun, 19 Mar 2017 09:09:51 +0100 > > schrieb tu...@posteo.de: > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > I have a smart NiMH-charger with serial port (normally used to > > > dump chargeing curves to the PC). > > > The chargers firmware can bei flashed with a flashtool provided > > > by the vendor. The communication is via serial port. I have > > > a PCI=>serial.ports-card installed in my PC. > > > > > > The command > > > > > > file <flashing tool> > > > > > > results in this information > > > > > > PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows > > > > > > . As Linux user by heart I have no Windows. > > > > > > May the attempt to install wine and use it for this purpose > > > a thinkable way or are the precoditions that way, that it > > > is due to those a NO-NO...? > > > > Flashing via serial port should be no problem from within Wine. It > > requires no special driver implementation. > > > > However, if the hardware implements its own driver behind the serial > > port, it won't work anyways because on the Wine side there will be > > no such driver. > > > > So I think, it should either work or fail early without doing > > damage. > > > > > > > Does anyone have experience with such an attempt? > > > > I'm usually doing such things from VirtualBox by passing through the > > hardware (usually USB, that's easily done from within the GUI). > > > > VirtualBox can also pass COM ports to the VM. You may want to try > > that as a second chance. > > > > > > -- > > Regards, > > Kai > > > > Replies to list-only preferred. > > Hi Kai (that's a rhyme! :)
Yeah, I know that one... If you are from Germany, you'll also get why my former nick (some years ago) was "Shark" :-) > I have installed Virtualbox already and use the Linux Image I > installed there for banking purposes only. Feels more secure. So something like application virtualization... You could maybe run in an isolated container, only exposing the xserver or run inside a nested xserver. It would probably greatly reduce startup times and not waste a complete image. > I would prefer the WIndows-in-a-(virtual)box-solution) as you > do -- if I would own a Windows installation disc. But do not. Well, you can easily get an image from MS using a Linux browser. Just go to the Windows 10 download page. It will show a selection form to choose the ISO instead of the nasty downloader they present to Windows browsers. Then install this inside the VM. Even if not activated, it runs for 1-2 hours before shutting down which should be enough for most purposes you'll need it for. If you already activated a Windows installation with your MS account, with some luck your Win10 VM may even become digitally activated (this happened to me). No cracks involved. Should be legal enough. ;-) > But it is good to know, that the wine-workaround would either > work or fail too early to damage anything. I tried some, and all failed because they didn't even find the device. The ones that worked where either network based (flashing via IP protocol) or using other simple interfaces (COM or LPT). > Is there anything important to know before doing an emerge > of wine (need I more than app-emulation/wine?) -- I have > literally no experience with this emulator - the flashing > tool is a 32bit gui application...) ??? Wine = wine is no emulater ;-) Actually, it's the Windows API implemented as .so files plus an EXE loader to enable the kernel to run PE binaries (instead of ELF). So nothing is emulated, it's running native. There's also a thin layer of drivers implemented to transform API calls to native kernel interfaces, like HID (for input devices). So everything connecting to simple HID-USB should also work (some custom USB hardware just implement a HID interface, it's simple and cheap). If your applications work depends on if the required parts of the API had been implemented (including the bugs that exists between different versions of Windows). So, with this knowledge, you simply emerge wine with the useflags that look useful to you. If you don't need graphics (DirectX) or don't want to apply your linux GUI theme to Windows apps, you can ignore the staging useflag. Wine can be compiled with both 64bit and 32bit support. After installation, get familiar with the winecfg utility. It allows mapping unix path to Windows drive letters. And it allows to set Windows version per EXE you run (to expose different API bugs and behavior to your application). Also, you can set DDL overrides (which is what Windows itself uses when you run applications in compatibility mode, or when you put DLL overrides manually in the registry). Tho, here you can decide between native (native DLL on filesystem) or builtin (*.dll.so file from Wine), and the order in which they are tried. You may also run with different WINEDEBUG settings if you want to work out problems. There are fixme lines which usually show stub implementations of API calls (functions that do nothing, and are there just to return success or fail). You can use it like this: # WINEDEBUG=-all wine your-exe-file.exe If you'd like to easily manage different Wine prefixes, I'd recommend using PlayOnLinux - it's not only useful to games. It also has a long list of scripted installers for installing popular Windows extensions that you may need (fonts, VB runtimes, C runtimes) in different versions. And then, maybe you want to use winetricks, tho it may be a bit tricky to run this with PlayOnLinux because it will default to the non-PlayOnLinux wine prefix. Easy work-around: Launch a commandline shell from within PlayOnLinux and run winetricks there. With PlayOnLinux you can easily reset or discard wine prefixes if you messed up. Also, you can see each prefix as some sort of compatibility profile you individually crafted per Windows application you are running. -- Regards, Kai Replies to list-only preferred.
