Search

Citrix COM Port Mapping

Tuesday, 12 June 2007 by Michel Roth

Jeff Muir, the guy who seems to have worked on a lot of Presentation Server components, has written yet some serious articles. The kind that you don't just read over coffee, having the radio on, if you know what I mean. This set of three articles is on the subject of COM port mapping. Although COM ports sound prehistorical, I actually catch myself having to utilize COM port mapping quite often. It's usually some kind of special scanning or reading device to up or download information to an application running on Presentation Server. I know that these of actions have gotten USB written all over them but up till now COM port mapping tends to be more successful. Jeff's articles might even be able to tell you why. Then again, maybe not...

"There are two kinds of COM port mapping support in Citrix. Why two? Well, one is the old way of doing things and the other the newer. Don�t ask me why the two ways weren�t combined. I�m not sure about that. It is similar to how there are multiple layers of supporting things related to printing. The old way is very basic and is focused primarily as treating the COM port like a file destination for the sake of printing. This was initially enabled to allow printing to simple printers on COM1 and COM2. In the early days it was common to have these ports defined for Point of Sale (POS) to control a cash register drawer or print receipts. Believe it or not, customers out there are still using it this way."

Read Jeffs articles: Part I, Part II and Part III.