Next: Monitor settings, Previous: Peripheral settings, Up: Settings and resources [Contents][Index]

### 6.12 RS232 settings

The VICE emulators can emulate the RS232 device most of the machines have. The C64, C128 and VIC20 emulators emulate the userport RS232 interface at 300, 1200 and 2400 baud. The C64 and C128 can also use the 9600 baud interface by Daniel Dallmann, using the shift registers of the two CIA 6526 chips. The PET can have a 6551 ACIA RS232 interface when running as a SuperPET, and the CBM-II has such an ACIA by default. The C64 and C128 emulators can emulate an ACIA 6551 (also known as Swithlink, Datapump or Turbo232 for example) as extension at `$de**`.

Emulation can be achieved by either:

- connecting a real UNIX serial device;
- dumping to a file;
- piping through a process.
- connect through a network socket.

It is possible to define up to four UNIX serial devices, and then decide which interface should be connected to which device. This is done by so-called rs232 device file names; an rs232 device file name can be either a simple path, a network address, or a command name preceeded by a pipe symbol ‘`|`’. If the path specifies a special device (e.g. `/dev/ttyS0`) it is recognized by VICE and the emulator can set the baudrate.

For example, rs232 device ‘`filename`’ will cause the output to be written (not appended) to the file `filename`, while printer device ‘`|lpr`’ will cause the `lpr` command to be executed and be fed the rs232 output. The rs232 output will not be converted but saved as sent by the emulated machine. The same holds true for the rs232 input. If the command writes data to the standard output it will be caught by VICE and sent back to the emulator. Also the data sent by the pseudo device will be sent back to VICE.

For example you can setup a null-modem cable between two serial ports of your PC, setup one port for login and use the other in VICE. Then you can login from your emulator via the RS232 emulation and the null-modem cable to your machine again.

Up to four RS232 devices may be specified through the following resources:

- device 1, whose default value is `/dev/ttyS0`;
- device 2, whose default value is `/dev/ttyS1`;
- device 3, whose default value is `127.0.0.1:25232`;
- device 4, whose default value is `|nc 127.0.0.1:25232`.

You can change the baudrate the tty device is set to by specifying it on the commandline or in the menu.

Next: Monitor settings, Previous: Peripheral settings, Up: Settings and resources [Contents][Index]