At 11:20 AM 12/27/96 -0500, you wrote: >Jim Robertson wrote: >> >> Can you explain further on your claim 'with anything' and 'run effectively >> with practically no compatibility problems whatsoever?' >> >> Can you provide communication routines that are simply polled and will work >> 'with anything' for us. >> >> I would like to see the same code used with Windows NT, WFWG, OS/2, unix >> and DOS. > > >Jim: > >We use polled and interrupt driven serial i/o routines that are written >in C and go directly to the hardware; these work fine in dos and (in a >dos box) in Win3.11 and Win95. Win-NT is a different beast, but if my >experience with real operating systems (which NT is getting to be one >of) is any predictor, the problems should be lessened, not made worse. >Our routines are compatible with various flavors of Unix once the C code >is translated. Dealing with the serial hardware is pretty straight >forward and pretty universal at that level, including the use of >interrupts. We haven't found any hardware our stuff doesn't work on yet. > >You should be able to get exactly the same results by just following >your nose. (The NT stuff will require a different approach.) > >Tom Rogers VP-R&D Time Tech inc. Tom, I noticed you said "polled and interrupt driven serial i/o." This discussion was only on polled i/o not interrupt driven. I don't know how much of what you are saying applies as you haven't given details on what was applicable to your polled i/o routines. Never the less, I believe you are confirming what I said. Sure, Windows 3.1 and Win95 can be straight forward enough but win95 can also cause great problems on slower boxes. I have customers using my equipment with win95 on a 25Mhz 486 and I can tell you it is not always as straight forward as you would hope. Polled i/o still requires a "friendly environment" to work properly. You have conceded NT which is one I had upper most in mind, nothing about OS/2 or windows for work groups though. OS/2 Warp uses a "virtual uart" and while you think you are directly accessing the hardware, you are not in fact. Therefore you are relying on OS/2 to be kind to your requirements. Not always the case. I have no shortage of email here to demonstrate this point. As for your successes, sure it may be valid and is of interest to me, but I have a 97-99% success rate with my programmers. It is the few failures that blow away the sort of statements I was replying to and consume 99% of your time dealing with serial communications. Currently, serial comms on the PC is a really screwed up affair. The bottom line is that simply using polled I/O is not a universal panacea for serial communications and will not work on 'anything' and in every case. I maintain the initial remarks were misleading and probably a guess more than anything. Having accumulated a lot of experience (and lost a lot of hair in the process,) this is something I do not need to make guesses about. Jim -------------------------------------------------------- Jim Robertson NEWFOUND ELECTRONICS Email: newfound@ne.com.au http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~newfound PHOENIX Shareware Picstart 16B upgrade coming. For more details, send email to newfound@ne.com.au with "subscribe phoenix mail list" in the BODY of the message. --------------------------------------------------------