JP1 on modern PC with Linux - working solution

Plugin · Post by **Plugin** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 3:52 am

Firstly, a big thanks to all who keep this forum going and updated to the latest and greatest. I'm guilty of dropping in and out as I do a tech refresh and then forget about things for a couple of years until the next time

In case it helps someone else, here are my catchup experiences that got me backup to speed.

It was time to update my remotes,

- several old JP1s (URC 7562s) with a simple JP1 parallel cable, and
- URC-8204 Kameleon with a JP1.x serial adapter purchased years back

A USB enabled URC-6440 is also on the way from Ebay.

None of my current PCs have any native serial or parallel ports, but I do have:

1. A PCIe parallel port card
2. A USB parallel cable
3. A USB to serial cable.

My Linux of choice is Gentoo, but I frequently use Ubuntu and most of this should apply to any recent Linux. I also use Windows VMs, mostly for work running in VirtualBox.

Downloaded RemoteMaster 2.03 and incredibly RMIR with my Kameleon, JP1.x serial and USB to serial cable just worked!!! Big thanks to the community!

The JP1 parallel was a much bigger problem but to cut a long story short, here's what works for me:

- Windows 10 32 bit VM in VirtualBox with LPT mapping (yes, LPT works in VBox now, see Enabling and Configuring Parallel (LPTx) Ports)
- IR 8.04 after running the included driver install

RMIR in the "working" Win10 VM does not find the JP1 remote, and on my 64bit Gentoo Linux crashes with a SIGSEGV in libjp1parallel.so.

Any suggestions on better ways of doing things would be very welcome.

Is the source available for libjp1parallel.so?

Barf · Post by **Barf** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 8:59 am

Sorry, but why do you "need" a parallel interface when the serial is working? The FTDI-interfaces (USB -> Serial) works directly out-of-the-box on all Linuxes I have tried.

When I looked at it some year ago, it turned out to be very primitive bit-banging code, not possible to run as non-root (and I am not talking about device permissions).

Plugin · Post by **Plugin** » Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:26 am

I already have a parallel cable, my JP1.x serial cable is not working with old JP1 remotes.

And you have pointed me in the right direction - sudo!

$ sudo java -jar RemoteMaster.jar -ir

Not sure why I didn't think of that in the first place.

This works fine with a parallel address of D010.

Not something I'd want to do in a secure environment but better than using VMs.