Hi everyone. I'm quite new to this kind of technology and still in the "scouting phase" .

I have an AT91SAM9261 board under my nose and I'm wondering if is possible to use its Debug Serial Port for purposes different than those its name implies. I mean: is there a chance to open a serial communication with other devices?
I'm trying to develop a Windows CE 5.0/6.0 application with .NET technology (Copact Framework 2.0).

Also, it's possible the need of a USB-to-serial adapter could araise in the next future. Have you ever found such an adapter who provides Windows CE 5.0/6.0 drivers?

Thank you very much.

Dear Erik,
It is possible to use the Debug Serial Port as a standard COM port, but it requires some code modification. It mustn't be used as a debug serial port, and the serial driver must be also modified.

It is not possible with the evaluation BSP.

Moreover, there is an issue with the last BSP release with CF2.0, an receive event is not set.

Best Regards.

Adeneo

Thank you for your quick reply.

Can you send us a modified BSP with COM port support? Serial communication is a key feature of our project. We can't go further into the development process without it.
Other boards such as Freescale's iMX31 have this feature. Beacuse of we're in the evaluation step, we really need to have a functional serial communication to make decision about the kit to use.

Thank you in andvance for your support.

Kind regards.

Erik,
the serial debug port is not dedicated to be used as a standard serial port. It is possible but it requires some modifications in the driver and the BSP.

Please contact our sale team : contact DOT msembedded AT adeneo DOT eu.

Best regards.

Adeneo

Thank you very much.

We eventually found the specification onto a hard-to-find document Our expectation was driven by the fact that serial communication is quite common on industrial tasks, thus making us to think a dual-purpose serial port could be mounted even on an evaluation board.

Anyway, I contacted the Sales team as you kindly suggested to me.

Thank you again for your support.

Erik.

what kind of modification are required, in order to leave the serial port for a normal use?
Have anyone experience on this topic?

If you want to have this functionnality, you must develop a new serial driver to support the debug controller instead of standard USART controller.