Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!sharkey!oxtrap!mudos!mju
From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Switching COM: Ports
Message-ID: <386.246BCD88@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Date: 13 May 89 06:04:20 GMT
Organization: A neat desk is a sign of a crazy person.
Lines: 35

In article <1392@bucket.UUCP>, donp@bucket.UUCP (Don Park) writes:
>>
>>   Is there a way to fake out a PC into talking to a different COM port?
>>
>
>One way would be to use BNUCOM - a Level 5 compatible F.O.S.S.I.L.
>driver. It comes with a utility to change BNU's com addresses to
>effectively use different ports without changing the program.
>(Assuming this program uses a fossil driver)

There are many other FOSSIL drivers for the IBM PC.  I've never heard
of BNUCOM (which leads me to believe that it isn't PD or shareware), but
you can use X00 or Opus!Comm, both of which are freeware.

Note that if this is a commercial product, or does not specifically mention
that you need a FOSSIL driver, it probably does not use FOSSIL calls, and
thus the method Don described above will not work.

(TechNote: FOSSIL is an I/O interface spec that allows a program to use
a standardized set of INT 0x14 function calls to do serial and console
I/O.  The FOSSIL driver is a device driver that is supposed to hook
INT 0x14, and respond to the calls that the running program makes.  This
allows the programmer to not worry about the mechanics of I/O (which, on
the IBM PC, frequently means talking directly to the UART for serial
I/O), and to easily allow his program to run on other non-BIOS compatable 
MS-DOS machines, such as the DEC Rainbow, simply by having the user install
the appropriate FOSSIL driver before running the program.  Because the FOSSIL driver is a separate program that usually must be obtained by the 
user, it is not usually used by commercial software designers.)

--  
Marc Unangst
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