FOSSIL

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2 total messages Started by Sang Y. Yum Thu, 23 Jul 1992 16:58

#111

Author: Sang Y. Yum
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 16:58

19 lines
1044 bytes

I've been observing this gruop for the path couple weeks.
I find the discussions very informative, for I myself enjoy
calling BBSs and get to meet different folks.

There is one area I need some help from you guys.  Once in a while,
somebody would talk about FOSSIL driver.  What is it?  What is it used for?

Any information would be appreciated.  I will post summary once enough
replies are received.

Thanks

Sang

---
  |||   Sang Y. Yum                 | tdat!syy@suntzu.West.Sun.COM 
   v    Teradata Corporation        | uunet!edsews!hacgate!tdat!syy 
 /\ /\  100 N. Sepulveda Blvd.      | sang.yum@ElSegundoCA.NCR.COM
/// \\\ El Segundo, Calif. 90245    | Ph: (310) 524-7685  FAX: (310) 524-0009

Re: FOSSIL

#116

Author: Matthew Chalmers
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 18:13

22 lines
1766 bytes

>There is one area I need some help from you guys.  Once in a while,
>somebody would talk about FOSSIL driver.  What is it?  What is it used for?

FOSSIL stands for Fido/Opus/SeaDog Standard Interface Layer. It was de-
signed for the folks in the Fido network (Fidonet) so as to minimize as
near zero as possible the compatibility problems with port communication
on PCs. There really isn't that much of a problem anymore, but Fido declared
the FOSSIL a network standard, and you'll find that most network interfaces
(i.e., mailer programs as opposed to BBS software) as well as BBS programs
which claim to be Fidonet compatible will use the FOSSIL driver (BNU, X00,
or other much less-known drivers).

So, basically, a FOSSIL is a program (or device driver in some cases,
just like ANSI.SYS or SHARE.EXE or some of the other common "device=<driver>"
lines you'll find in a DOS CONFIG.SYS file) which is the middle-man
between the ports on the computer and the programs that need to talk
through them. So a program which runs under a FOSSIL actually just sends
all the stuff it needs to tell the ports to the FOSSIL instead, and the
FOSSIL figures out where to send it from there, and vice versa.

This is a very short and sweet definition of FOSSIL, and so others may
reply with other, possibly much different, definitions.

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