Xref: utzoo comp.lang.smalltalk:1071 comp.sys.mac.programmer:6319
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!goofy.apple.com!chesley
From: chesley@goofy.apple.com (Harry Chesley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: More comments on Smalltalk/V Mac
Message-ID: <1859@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 15 May 89 17:50:27 GMT
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 23
References:<2260@pur-phy> <17450@mimsy.UUCP>

In article <17450@mimsy.UUCP> folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) writes:
>  Is there any provision for a stream to/from the Serial port?  I searched
>  all through Inside Mac, and basically decided--am I right?--that the I/O
>  calls that are documented are not direct Trap calls.  Therefore, I would
>  have to go to Lightspeed C and write a VPRM to do i/o.  It is great that
>  Smalltalk/V has this nice hook, but it would be nice to have serial
>  i/o capability primitives supplied.  Or did I just miss something?

The calls documented in Inside Macintosh are not direct trap calls, but 
they map easily to trap calls since the serial port driver is accessible 
via the standard PBRead/PBWrite/PBControl/etc. calls. The routines in 
Inside Macintosh provide an easier-to-use, "high level" interface. To find 
the "low level" equivalent calls, read the sections in the Inside 
Macintosh serial port section marked "Assembly-language note".

This is true of pretty much all the other drivers as well. You can write 
some pretty low level stuff in Smalltalk/V and still stay entirely in 
Smalltalk.

I've implemented a serial port stream, so I know this works. I'm afraid it 
isn't in distributable form though. However, feel free to email me any 
specific questions if you run into trouble implementing your own serial 
port stream.