Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!tness1!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Serial Ports
Message-ID: <2727@sugar.uu.net>
Date: 2 Oct 88 12:24:19 GMT
References: <14909@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston, TX
Lines: 39

In article <14909@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, spencer@eris.berkeley.edu (Randal m. Spencer [RmS]) writes:
> If you wanted to put a box on the outside of your Amiga that spoke serial
> data (such as the X-10 box) couldn't you use one of those parallel to serial
> converter boxes.  I know that you can't just run VT100 and have it talk out
> the parallel port, but would it be that hard to change it?

Yes, I could go in by hand and change every program I have the source to to
use either parallel.device or serial.device. The point I'm making is that
since the machine didn't come with two serial ports commercial software doesn't
have an option for 'device=serial.device, unit=1'. These programs (Deluxe Music,
say, or Diga) don't speak parallel.

That still doesn't give me the 4 or 8 lines I want to run a multiuser BBS,
either.

> Actually, if you got really ambitious you could sit down and write a serial
> device like thing that spoke to the parallel port.  Then you write a little
> program based on MWB that would take the next call to OpenDevice (serial.dev)
> and route that to the semi-serial.device.

Yes, there was a discussion on how to handle multiple serial port cards (that
still haven't come out) that would depend on the standard driver software
for that card doing gross things like this. Better would be to completely
replace serial.device with one that looks in some standard place (ENV:serial,
say) for an alternative to serinternal.device, and then open serinternal.device
or whatever other device it found there.

This is one of the areas where Commodore seems to be slightly blind.

> Bryce and Randell were going to be hired into Commodore and they would get
> to fight out how to write the new Serial.Device stuff to support multiple
> ports.  I do kind of wonder how that is coming...

I really hope they don't end up with one of the kludges that were being
discussed at that time. Any of them are only a interim solution until the
software that supports 'device=serial.device, port=0' comes out.
-- 
		Peter da Silva  `-_-'  peter@sugar.uu.net
		 Have you hugged  U  your wolf today?