how to connect two Windows computers by USB for communication between their virtual serial ports?

Question

What is needed for the physical USB connection between two Windows computers for communication between their virtual serial ports? Should I use USB/serial adapters?

I am building a .NET terminal app on Windows 10 Pro computer that must use a virtual serial port for communication through a USB connection to the virtual serial COM port at a Windows 7 Pro computer that is running the terminal app on .NET.

The terminal app is the PortChat example app from MSDN's serial port documentation.

PURPOSE: I need to test a serial communication .NET app on Windows 10 that will eventually communicate with an embedded STM that is presently unavailable .

Answer 1

You can do this with two USB serial adapters and a null-modem cable. If you just need something quick that is known to work, this is a good option (I suggest either FTID or PL2303 based adapters for this, they seem to be more reliable when talking to other USB-to-Serial adapters in my experience than other options).

However, you may be able to find a cable that just does the whole thing for you. I already know such things exist for Ethernet connections (those 'USB transfer' cables you see advertised sometimes are cases of this, they have two USB-to_ethernet adapters hard-wired to each other), so I would actually be a bit surprised if such hardware did not exist already.