Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!pollux.usc.edu!papa
From: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Supra 2400zi and Populous modem mod
Message-ID: <22731@usc.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 90 20:50:47 GMT
References: <17334@duke.cs.duke.edu> <111400095@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@usc.edu
Organization: Felsina Software, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 43

In article <111400095@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> ja26612@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
|  I am sure that the culprit is my Supra 2400zi modem, and its
|infamous modem0.device replacement for serial.device. 

Wrong culprit.

|The question is,
|does this mean I will never be able to take advantage of modem games
|like Populous, Falcon, F-16 Combat Pilot, etc, etc, etc?

If they use the CIA ports directly instead of the serial.device (as most
game do) you are out of luck.

|  I sure hope not. I tried using the ModemModify program on the
|populous and populous.pgm files listed in the dir from the game disk
|but it claimed that serial.device was nowhere to be found in those
|files. 

That's a sign that the program does not use the serial.device and instead 
addresses directly the hardware serial port registers. One easy way is to
look for the serial.device string with either UNIX-like "strings" program,
or with TYPE filename OPT h.  If you can't find the string, you can't use
the program with multi-serial devices.

|I even tried calling Electronic Arts (distributer for Populous)
|but they blamed it on "programmers from the UK". (Their words.

What they meant is that the programmers directly addressed the internal
chips (likely in assembler).  Lots of european games have been built 
without respecting "portability" rules (as one can very see in the Abacus
book series, full of non-no's code).

|  I tried calling Supra, but got no answer. Anyone have any other
|bright ideas, or better yet a known solution to this dilemma? Any help
|would be greatly appreciated.

Feel happy to be able to use the game on the built-in serial port and
forget about everything else :-)

-- Marco
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Xerox sues somebody for copying?" -- David Letterman
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=