[offtopic?] serial port forwarding

[Illtud Daniel]

I know this isn't strictly a VNC question, but the requirement
has cropped up as a result of my playing with VNC. I've got VNC3.3.3r2
server on RH6.1 and the viewer on NT4sp5. It's working so well that
I've been able to stick the Linux box in a rack in the back of the
machine room and forget about it.

My problem arises as I'm about to buy (well... strictly speaking I'm
about to get somebody else to buy for me - always the best policy) a
Palm Vx organiser. They cohabit happily with Linux, but they connect
(hotsync) via a serial cable to a little cradle. I'd like to use the
Linux connection software rather than the NT version, but I'm sitting
at my NT box, and this is the obvious place to have the cradle.

So the way I figure it, I need to forward a serial port on this NT
box to a virtual one on the linux box. Now somebody on Slashdot said
that this is how VNC works anyhow to trap the kbd & mouse, but I
can't see anything about it in the docs or archives, nor is it a
very sensible way of doing it*, so I'm very sceptical. OS/2 could do
this, apparently, but all the modem sharing stuff I've seen for NT
shares the winsock (for obvious reasons) rather than the serial port.

So, my question to the list is:

 /Does/ VNC forward NT serial ports??

 If not, does anything else?

 Failing *that*, does anything forward linux ports? (so that I've
 got a client end to start with, at least)

 Anybody got any other solutions for the original problem - ie. a
 serial-connected device on NT transparently visible as a normal
 serial port on linux.

Any comments or pointers to more appropriate forums appreciated.


[* if this /is/ how VNC does it, then obviously it /must/ be
   sensible. Grovel, grovel etc.]

-- 
Illtud Daniel                                 illtud.daniel "at" llgc.org.uk
Uwch Ddadansoddwr Systemau                       Senior Systems Analyst
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru                  National Library of Wales
Yn siarad drosof fy hun, nid LlGC   -  Speaking personally, not for NLW
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send a message with the line: unsubscribe vnc-list
to majordomo "at" uk.research.att.com
See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------