Can Singer Professional Sew-Ware run in Wine on Ubuntu 10.4?
 

Good evening, everyone. This is my first post on Linux Questions, and I hope that someone will be able (and willing!) to help a rank noob!

I'm trying to get a product called "Professional Sew-Ware" running on Ubuntu 10.04. The software is used to create embroidery designs.

The software appears to install without a problem, and even places an icon on the desktop. However, when I try to run the app, I get an error window that says "Error in cportio.sys driver".

Now, along with the software is a "PSW reader" device that is used to read / write the embroidery designs to an "SM"-type memory card (which is ultimately put into a Singer sewing machine). The device itself uses a serial interface. On the Windows machine that the software is currently running on, we use a USB-Serial converter.

I suspect that the "cportio.sys" error is caused by the software not being able to access the PSW device (as that what the Windows software does when it starts up).

The serial converter is a "Future Technology Devices International FT-232" adapter. Thinking that maybe the system did not recognize the device, I followed this procedure to enable the adapter. With no luck, obviously.

Any assistance on this would be greatly welcomed, and I'll provide any additional information that might be needed.

Thanks!!

Jon J.

cportio.sys is a Windows driver.
It's likely that this software won't work in WINE as this driver indicates that the software needs some direct hardware access that is not possible through WINE. (I'm just guessing so I may be wrong about this)
Your best bet is to contact Singer directly and try to get them to come up with a solution.
http://www.psw-support.com/
I hope they can help.

qlue:

Thanks for the reply! I would have to agree with you that cportio.sys is a Windows driver - it lives in the /WIndows/System32/Drivers directory, and installed in the same Wine location.

The bad news about the Singer support site is that it hasn't been updated since about '03, and neither has the software. Singer itself was purchased by Viking (I think). They of course have their own software that they want to buy that, surprisingly, won't work with the Singer machines that my wife uses.

We're looking at getting some new PCs, and I'm trying to move away from Windows. Worst case, we could run her old machine as a VM on a new Linux system. But, it would have to be "one click simple" pretty much. And I don't think I'm quite smart enough to get there yet!

I'll keep poking around and see what else I can find out.

Thanks again!

Jon J.

I hope you can find a solution! :)