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Frasca 131 to work with FSX

P

parcharidis.m

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Hello everyone!

There is an inactive Frasca 131 simulator in our aeroclub with fully functional panels/instruments but unfortunately the "old times" computer with DOS has fallen apart along with its ISA graphics accelerator. I believe that the drivers of Frasca software are specific for this ISA card but I can't find it anywhere to buy it. Therefore, I have the physical instruments and hardware of Frasca 131 but I can't display anything on the screen with the software.

Soooo, I came up with the idea to connect the Frasca 131 's serial port to a modern computer which will run the FSX and have the SimConnect being the connection bridge between the serial data transmitted from the Frasca's panel and the FSX simulator.

Do you have any ideas if this is even possible or how to make it happen? I presume that there has to be a program (written in any language) with no graphics that will run before the FSX and read all the indications sent from the serial port and afterwards push it to SimConnect and then to the simulator. And probably vice versa in order to have the instruments displaying the actual measurements.

I have been a long time Java developer and I am willing to start over with any language provided that this will work. Also, any person willing to do this will give great joy to our aeroclub in Thessaloniki, Greece and to all the simmers with passion to the real thing!

Any help is very welcome

Thanks!
 
WarpD

WarpD

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Without knowing the details of what data transmits via the serial connection... this isn't going to go anywhere.
 
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parcharidis.m

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WarpD said:
Without knowing the details of what data transmits via the serial connection... this isn't going to go anywhere.
Click to expand...
This is the challenge here. Unfortunately this is a product as is therefore we need to read from the serial port and expect the indicators to change. Any ideas for implementing the idea at an architectural level first? For example Serial port -> python program for serial reading -> Simconnect -> FSX?
 
WarpD

WarpD

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I do all coding in C++, having little use for other languages. However, you need to know what to send/receive from the Frasca unit before you can do anything else.
 
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parcharidis.m

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WarpD said:
I do all coding in C++, having little use for other languages. However, you need to know what to send/receive from the Frasca unit before you can do anything else.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply! Agreed. I will try to write code to read from serial port but where do i "push" it to? To SimConnect? To Pete Dowson's FSUIPC? And from there to FSX?

The probable solution would be to have a program (no GUI, C++ or Py or Java) running in the background and pushing/receiving data to/from the SimConnect/FSUIPC to/from FSX. Is that correct? Or is there any other way? It's my first time bothering with "behind the scenes" of FSX, all I did before was flying the PMDG and a couple of single engines.
 
WarpD

WarpD

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2,079
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us-ohio
You aren't even remotely ready to care about the actual connection to FSX. You have to know how to interact with the Frasca hardware first. Once you know what the hardware needs, you can select the next step. I would prefer SimConnect myself... it doesn't rely on a third-party to make everything work.
 
P

parcharidis.m

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greece
Thanks a lot for your reply. I will ask for the old SDK IF there is any. I could monitor the serial port with Wireshark but without the SDK i think it would be pretty difficult. But if this ever happened, it would be a real cockpit and FSX playing together!
 
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