Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Question about multiple serial boards Message-ID: <4951@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 18 Jan 90 03:28:04 GMT References: <7970@nigel.udel.EDU> <14137@grebyn.com> <130261@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4943@sugar.hackercorp.com> <130368@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Reply-To: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Distribution: na Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston Lines: 49 In article <130368@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis) writes: > Why do people use the serial.device and not SER: ? The reason is fairly > simple, because the handler doesn't do what most people want to do with > a serial device, which is Which is not relevant. The default serial device is "serial.device",0. In fact, a well behaved terminal program should have requestors that allow you to change that. > You are absolutely correct, devices do have names but no one is arguing > that file requesters should put up "trackdisk.device", "harddisk.device" > as selections. If you have a generic format program, why not? [ Lots of stuff about improving the handler-level interface ] That's *also* a good idea, but in the existing world a modem program that doesn't allow you to specify things in the currently available name space is just plain broken. That's all. Oh yes, a modem program really shouldn't be busy-waiting on the serial port, as you describe. That's IBM-PC style stuff... busy-waiting is not acceptable on the Amiga. And there's no way to wait on two file handles at once (Hey, Commodore, how about making asynchronous I/O to handlers roek in 1.4?), so you have to go down to the DoIO level for an efficient terminal program anyway. > and ASDG can just deliver their drivers and tell users "To use our > port, set your preferences selection for the serial device to WhizBang" > And the application will automatically pick up the new serial device. Yeh? And what happens if I want to run two modem programs at once, on two lines? I've needed to do that badly enough that I wrote a dual-port split- screen modem program for the IBM-PC. > Once you get people using the name of the handler, you can actually make > it into a full fledged name space if you chose. We *have* a full-fledged name space. device name and unit number uniquely identifies a port. Now what you *really* need is a "ROOT:" device and a packet you can send to a handler to return the underlying device so you can DoIO to your heart's content. And there *are* existing modem programs that support underlying devices. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' 'U` "I haven't lost my mind, it's backed up on tape somewhere"