Vista - Running WDEB386 and the debugging kernel of Windows 3.1

Ok, here's another blast from the past. I was playing around with my WFWG
installation, and I also had the SDK and DDK installed. I remember from years
ago debugging software using the debugging kernel and the wdeb386 remote
debugger. So, I thought I'd give this a try in a virtual environment. I don't
have it working yet, so before I knock myself senseless, I thought I'd ping
the group to see if it had been done yet.

I have two identical DOS 6.22 virtual machines and as a test, I configured
both to map COM1 to the same named pipe. I installed PROCOMM (another of my
favorite programs -- I still use it for my vintage computing projects) and
was able to send characters between the virtual machines. So far, so good.

I left PROCOMM running on one VM (and still connected to COM1) and started
wdeb386 on the other. I made sure I switched to the debugging kernel (using
the n2d batch file) and fired up the debugger with "wdeb386 /c:1 /v win.com".

All I get is a big fat nothing. I haven't yet tried connecting to the
virtual machine over a real serial port but since I have PROCOMM
communicating I figure that it's not the link.

Has anyone tried to do this? Right now, it's part intellectual exercise more
than a specific need but I do have some old software I wrote long ago that
I'd like to poke around with again.

Any input appreciated. Thanks!

I did some further experimentation by mapping the virtual COM port to a text
file and the debugging kernel is definitely emitting trace messages. So I
looked at the PROCOMM link again.

In a dumb move, I had the programs configured for local echo, so I wasn't
seeing characters coming across the pipe at all. Bummer. So, I tried to
install a few different DOS-based communications programs (Telix, Procomm
Plus). PCPlus actually crashes and won't install. Telix doesn't see anything.

Back to the drawing board...

I solved the communications problem. To make this work -- and avoid the named
pipe issue in VCP7SP1, grab a program called com0com off of SourceForge. It's
a system driver that creates two virtual COM ports which are connected
together -- a virtual NULL Modem cable as it were. The only thing you have to
do is rename the default port names to normal "COMx" names otherwise VPC
won't recognize it.

This isn't the only program -- I've found several null modem devices -- but
this worked for me.

I have Windows 3.1 running in a VM (with COM1 mapped to port0 of the null
modem device) connected to the "debug" terminal (which is Hyperterminal)
connected to port1 of the null modem. I also tried this with two virtual
machines and it works fine.

Rich

"Rich Cini" wrote: