Windows – USB device not recognized in cygwin

cygwin;windows 7

Hi guys desperate help here as my senior college project is due in 2 weeks. I have this lcd display that is connected via USB to my laptop (Windows 7 Professional 32bit) and when I open cygwin it is not under /dev. I don't know how to manually mount it either unfortunately. The display lights up and is recognized by Windows (proper name under Device Manager) and is on COM5 (Location: Port_#0001.Hub_#0001). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Best Answer

Cygwin is a partial implementation of some of the POSIX subsystem, enabling some POSIX apps to run on Windows. It is not a full operating system, does not provide (kernel-mode) drivers for hardware and will not behave like a full UNIX OS will in all cases.

While CygwinX does provide basic support for XWindows, it's pretty rudimentary and is, due to its nature, simply using the Windows graphics API's to render the X UI.

The devices under /dev in Cygwin are merely mappings to a subset of the devices your PC supports. Most of these devices support keyboard, mouse, storage devices, etc.

I very much doubt you'll find a way to get Cygwin to support esoteric devices like USB LCD screens.

If you want to use a POSIX/UNIX OS to drive such a device, then I strongly encourage you to dual-boot into Linux or similar. Whether you'll manage to find Linux drivers for your screen is another matter. You might have some luck here.

HTH.

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