Can I used the ENET-232 as a simple communications device?

[davec 140]

I bought several of these ENET-232 devices a couple of years ago in order to provide simple remote access to serial port devices. I ended up putting them in storage because it only came with drivers for Windows NT, and we don't use Windows NT. But at least it supported remote access to serial devices by mapping to COM devices. Now, I discover that linux drivers are available, so I download and install them, then I ended up spending several hours trying to figure out how to use them to transfer raw data to the remote serial device, and it's like I'm in the freaking twilight zone or something. Is this device even usable without diving headlong into LabVIEW or all this VISA shit? I mean I'm sure it's reall
y cool and all, but all I want to do right now is open a remote serial port using a generic terminal emulator, and it's been a nightmare discovering that there is apparently no route to do this. For all the effort I've put into it, I could have built one myself. Is this device usable without LabVIEW?

[Chris_Rake]

The Linux driver offers NI-VISA support - native support is not available. You can use the remote serial ports as VISA resources under Linux, and thus any application written to use the VISA API can use these ports. However chances are your terminal program does not use the VISA API.

[Sanjay]

The device also has native support for Windows 2000 (and has also been tested to work under Windows XP); but yes, unfortunately under Linux (and Solaris) the only support available is through NI-VISA. However, the device IS usable without LabVIEW; NI-VISA has a C language API. There's more info on this in the product manual available via "http://ni.com/support" (the exact link is "http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/370323b.pdf").

[davec 140]

Thanks for the quick response. You can probably tell I started out with the wrong expectations for this product. My first follow-up question would be if anyone knows of a simple terminal program written for the VISA API.

My second is if anyone knows why NI would choose not to provide native support in a UNIX environment. It seems like a painfully obvious and useful application of the product, and it should be very easy to implement.

I can't imagine that NI would want to prevent people from using the product in this way. I will gladly implement it for free with their permission.