I had been running my machine by sending Gcode text files from Coolterm on a Mac OSX laptop. I recently added a Raspberry Pi4 and installed coolterm and the driver. I can type in commands and the machine responds correctly. But when I try to send the same text files I was using on OSX it just spazzes out and does seemingly random things.
I did try sending the RTFs I was using on OSX that worked. I also tried converting them to TXT files which also didnt work. It seems like in addition to the spazzing out that the machine is not receiving the entire text file as the Pi "finishes" sending in 30seconds what takes about 9 minutes to run on OSX.
I am assuming you mean Rich text Format when you say RTF.
Your observation that Pi finished first leads me to think that flow control is not working properly.. What settings are you using for CoolTerm and TinyG?
I would suggest that RTS (Request to Send) would be the best place to start.
That would be Tiny G parameter $ex=2 and a proper setting at the Cool Term end.
We see a lot of Pis in use interfacing TinyG, but most often as the SPJS machine when using Chilipeppr. SPJS implements software flow control based on buffer fill signalling and bypasses hardware flow control. CNCJS has a similar mechanism Your file is likely being sent to completion by the Pi, but what TinyG is actually working on is a mess of buffer overruns at the TinyG end.
$ex=2 was already set and RTS was already set to on. Its also got XON flow control set. (Both on OSX and the Pi). Should I try CTS?
You were actually helping me about a month ago about with setting up Chillipeppr on the Pi, we eventually found the problem I was having is that I hadnt realized I out in the rouge by trying to run it 100% on the Pi. I really dont want to get 2 computers & wifi involved in this if possible.
RTS/CTS is generally one protocol. It is generally preferred over Xon/Xoff where many implementation inconsistencies have been reported. You might want to poke around a bit on how well Pi4 hardware implements what has rapidly become a fading flow control method.
A bit of searching does not find a reliable answer to the question "does the Raspian USB driver provide RTS/CTS protocol support as required by CoolTerm?"
Have you tried any other Linux terminal emulators, such as Putty?