🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <46100241@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> leonardr@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>  Please note that Apple has NOT YET defined a way for communications software
>to access more than the two standard serial ports.  If you are writing your won
>software to access the cards, then you will be O.K., but you will only work with
>that particular brand of card, and not others..
>	Just some info to keep in mind.

This is very true, Apple have announced that they are working on something
called the 'Communications Manager', what they've shown publically seems
to be very good. However programs that use serial ports will require major
rewrites.

In the mean time there is a standard interface (the existing serial ports),
our board (CommCard) uses this interface (but you open each port with a
different name).  Untill Apple's new code comes out for our board we have
two possible solutions:

	- a software port remapper for the A/B ports, this is not much more
	  than a software A/B box, but it lets existing programs work

	- the ability to search the system for serial ports (I posted this
	  in comp.sys.mac.programmer a few months ago) so that you can throw
	  their names up in a dialog box. However this requires programs to be
	  modified. As far as I know this mechanism works with all the serial
	  cards I know of.

Of course many people who want to use serial ports want to do so from scratch 
for scientific or control applications (for example I have one user with 20
ports on his mac doing data collection), these people don't seem to need much
more than the ability to open particular ports by name (so that they know which
port is wired to which device).


	Paul

-- 
Paul Campbell			..!{unisoft|mtxinu}!taniwha!paul (415)420-8179
Taniwha Systems Design, Oakland CA

 	"Read my lips .... no GNU taxes"