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Can someone please explain the terminal and virtual COM port?

James Murphy1
Prodigy 70 points

Hi all can someone please explain to me why there has to be a virtualised COM port and in addition to this, just what exactly are we looking at if we were to PuTTy to the COM port when the device is connected?

Is this a pre-loaded program loaded into the flash memory of the device that we are interacting with or maybe something on the EEPROM?

Can this program be changed? If we were to download a program we wrote in C to the device and then opened a terminal session to the device via the virtual COM port would we see our program?

I am just fascinated by this as you can tell!

Is there a way we can "look" inside the devices memory to see what is stored in there at all?

  • 0
    Guru 86755 points

    Hi James,

    James Murphy1 said:
    Is this a pre-loaded program loaded into the flash memory of the device that we are interacting with or maybe something on the EEPROM?

         No.

    James Murphy1 said:
    Can this program be changed? If we were to download a program we wrote in C to the device and then opened a terminal session to the device via the virtual COM port would we see our program?

         Yes.

         If told in detail it is a long explanation. You can do a search in the internet about usb to serial windows drivers.

         If you are not familiar, in the past there were no USB ports. What there is is UART COM port and ports for your mouse and keyboard. With advancement in technology, PC motherboards nowadays don't have UART COM port. What's there instead is USB.

         As you can see from your Tiva kit, the connection from your Tiva kit UART0 to your PC is through a USB port. So, a USB to serial windows driver is needed to create a virtual COM port. This connection to your PC also enables you to debug your Tiva Kit. You, can know how the circuitry about this by studying the schematic diagram of your Tiva kit.

         There are examples at Tivaware that ables you to test the UART functionality of your kit using the Virtual COM Port. Some examples of these are the hello and uart_echo example program. You would need a terminal such as Putty to view the output coming from your Tiva kit.

         If you are new to Tiva kit, I suggest you go through the workshop for it. Elsewhere in the internet, there are tutorials that you can find. If you encounter any problems using your Tiva kit, just post your question at E2E, hopefully someone will have the time to help you.

    - kel  

  • 0 in reply to Markel Robregado
    Prodigy 70 points
    Sincere apologies for not replying sooner, thank you for your informative post.