a device name on your OS
/dev/ttys0 for example

Thank you very much. Wanted to be sure. Smoke test tomorrow. Hoping to run a dos fuel injection prog on my macbook to check/setup engine.

I think this thread is the closest to my issue. I am running dosbox (acutally, the boxer front-end) on OSX, and can't figure out how to connect to my printer. The printer is connected to a USB port on the iMac.
On my XP computer, in the built-in DOS emulator, I use the following line to access the printer:
net use LPT1 \\MAC001EC212DABD\Dell /persistent:Yes

I tried adding that to the autoexec.bat section of my DOSBoxpreferences file, but got an "unrecognized command" response when I started it up.
So I assume the solution is in the serial section. But I don't know what parameters to put in. I have it now set to: serial1=directserial realport:com1 but that doesn't work. Can anyone tell me what to use?

I am thrilled to have found DOSBox, and have resurrected some long unplayable games. Now if only I could print, then my beloved old word processor can be revivied as well!

printing goes over parallel ports. not serial ones.

You'll probably need to just run your program in Windows XP using Parallels Desktop for OSX.

I don't think HAL's parallel patch works in OSX (and it's not included in the official DOSBox anyway).

Well that explains it, thanks, Qbix. But it doesn't solve my problem.
There is no parallel settings section in the conf file. Isn't usb serial?
The word processing program allows me to choose any of the following for printer ports: PRN, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, AUX, COM1, COM2

DosFreak: yes, I looked at HAL's patch and determined it wouldn't work. I'm trying to avoid going the Parallels route if at all possible.

The virtual printer patch may work though.

mefggf - all those device names boils down to 2 device-types:

LPTx = Parallel
COMx = Serial

As you have discovered, standard DOSBox don't support parallel ports, so you have to use the serial port setting both in the DOSBox config, and when choosing the print device in the word processor.

DOSBox expects you to configure that realport=..... with a serial device name in your operating system. So the question now is: Is that USB-printer represented as a serial port in Mac OSX? A name like /dev/tty......?

Well now we're bumping up against my ignorance.
I did a search of my mac hard drive for /dev and dev/ and got nothing.
On the printer's options and settings page there is this:
URL usb://Dell/DellLaserPrinter?serial=61BEX2E
I assume those are two different things.

Perhaps I should call Apple support now that I have a question to ask them.

MiniMax wrote:

represented as a serial port in Mac OSX? A name like /dev/tty......?

Yep, directserial on the Mac works in this way.

serial1=directserial realport:cu.modem (see the entry 'modem' in the screenshot below)

If you're using DOSBox frontends, like Dapplegrey (I won't recommend it here because I've programmed it),
maybe in the frontend there is an option available to count the serial connections available to your Macintosh.

For Dapplegrey, if the user holds down the Option (alt) key and opens the help menu,
then a menu point "Count serial ports" becomes visible, where this screenshot is taken from.

This is an example, taken from the screenshot right here, but my USB printer is not recognized this way.

mefggf: OS X hides your /dev/ folder by default and will not let you see it through Finder. You can still access it from the Terminal though: launch /Applications/Terminal.app and type "ls /dev/ |more" to see a list of all devices represented on your system.

From what I read elsewhere online, outgoing serial devices start with "cu.": e.g. /dev/cu.modem, /dev/cu.Bluetooth-Modem, /dev/cu.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync . Your USB printer may show up as one of these, which you can check with "ls /dev/cu.*". If it's there, point DOSBox to the device name without the /dev/ directory prefix, as IIGS_User describes, e.g.:
serial1=directserial realport:cu.modem

(From what I've read, each cu. device has a corresponding tty. device - apparently cu is for data going to the device, tty is for data coming from the device. I have no idea what the repercussions of this are for DOSBox when using a two-way communication device like a modem.)

Off-topic:

The 'cu' thing is short for Call Unix (I think), meaning this device is suitable when you want to setup a connection to another Unix system. Typically, that would mean that it was a serial port with a modem attached.

And 'tty' is short for Teletype, a type of mechanical typewriter used as the console device on very old computers. A teletype was typical attached to a serial line.

Thanks for useful thread. I'd tried previously to get the serial port working on FreeBSD then again on OSX with no luck.

I can now report a working config 😀

My config file is at

1~/Library/Preferences/DOSBox Preferences

(took me a while to figure this out).

My USB-Serial adaptor - similar to one of these is

1/dev/tty.usbserial

The device is set up in the config file as:

1serial1=directserial realport:tty.usbserial

I'd also like to add a link to this page which I found useful debugging the serial support in OSX before I started the DOSBox config.

Nick.

nickbeee wrote:

My config file is at […]
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My config file is at

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1~/Library/Preferences/DOSBox Preferences

(took me a while to figure this out).

True, this is the first place where DOSBox looks for a config file.