VX-7 Commander

What works

As reported by Eric (N6LG), most features work with just one glaring exception (see next section).

Additionally, the advanced mods work (MARS/CAP and Freeband), and uploading from the computer to the VX-7R works (!!). Read/write from disk files in native format and csv works.

I'm using a PL2303-based USB to serial adapter. If you're using an adapter with an unknown chip here's a link to an article that describes how to identify the device manufacturer and type and tell the Linux OS about it so it can use the ttyUSB driver.
http://blog.mypapit.net/2008/05/how-to-use-usb-serial-port-converter-in-ubuntu.html
If you're using a PL2303-based adapter then the vendor code is 0x067b and the product code is 0x2303. You can modprobe the Linux OS to make the driver association like so (with root privilege):

modprobe usbserial vendor=0x067b product=0x2303

To get this to work with Wine it is necessary to create a symlink to a device that Wine recognizes as a serial port. Since Wine already maps ttyS0 through ttyS3 to COM1 through COM4 (at least on my system) I chose to map ttyUSB0 to ttyS4. Wine is happy to recognize this as COM5. A permanent link can be made, that is one that will be re-created at every boot, by creating a udev rule. Open a text editor (with root privilege) and type in:

KERNEL=="ttyUSB0" SYMLINK="ttyS4"

Save that file in the '/etc/udev/rules.d/' directory with a unique file name, with the '.rules' extension. ('anyfilename.rules' will do.)

Now every time you boot your Linux system, the system will associate the USB serial adapter with the ttyUSB driver, map it to ttyUSB0, and then symlink ttyUSB0 to ttyS4. Then, when you fire up a Wine application, Wine will map ttyS4 to COM5. All slick.

What does not

As reported by Eric, download from the VX-7R to VX-7 Commander does not function properly. On my system VX-7 Commander reads the first two blocks of data from the VX-7R, begins reading the third block, and then hangs part way through the transfer with a timeout.

This is an issue with this application's interaction with Wine – some difference between setup for the serial port under Windows vs. under Wine, I guess. This same serial adapter works perfectly with another VX-7R transfer program that runs under native Linux. (See extra comments.)

Workarounds

What was not tested

some of the more esoteric memory manipulation capabilities

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Although the inability to download from the VX-7R is a serious limitation, all is not lost. As Eric pointed out there is another program that runs under native Linux that can be used for the download. Use the vxclone program in VX-Manager-0.6.0 (not "VT-Manager-0.6.0" as listed above) to download data from the VX-7R and save the data in native .vx7 format. Then use VX-7 Commander to read the .vx7 file and do everything else. Thanks to KC8UNJ for a great program. (Wish he'd let somebody else have a peek at the code, maybe fix the download issue.)