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From: pozar@kumr.lns.com (Tim Pozar)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: Latest Fossil Driver
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.175203.1034@kumr.lns.com>
Date: 13 Jun 91 17:52:03 GMT
References: <203.2855A6B8@zswamp.uucp>
Organization: Late Night Software (San Francisco)
Lines: 30

In article <203.2855A6B8@zswamp.uucp> root@zswamp.uucp (Geoffrey Welsh) writes:
>In a letter to All, David Shapiro (bigd@dorsai ) wrote:
>
> >Also, can someone summarize the reasons that a fossil driver 
> >would be needed?
>
>(1) The IBM PC BIOS drivers for the serial port are woefully inadequate;
   Agreed!

>(2) Wynn Wagner became frustrated with the Greenleaf communications library 
>around the same time that Thom Henderson and Tom Jennings became frustrated 
>with the comm libs they were using;
   Almost...  Tom wrote the FidoBBS program.  Tom also worked for a 
company called Phoniex software (those BIOS folks) where he was doing
work on porting MS-DOS to a number of different machines.  (Ever seen
MS-DOS run on a multibus?)  At the same time there was a number of 
clones coming out that had very different ideas of what the serial 
port should do (ie. Dec Rainbow).  Several folks asked Tom to port 
Fido over to their machines.  Tom developed a "Generic" communications 
driver.  A couple of years later (and fortunatly the Rainbow left this 
planet) Henderson and others took Tom's generic comm stuff and 
developed the FOSSIL standard.  (Basicly, it is an extension of the 
int14 IBM-PC comm hooks.)  It has become the "default" standard at 
least in the FidoNet world.

                  Tim

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