🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi NeXTers,
I post this for a company who has no internet access. Please don't
reply. Send mail to ds%dandsnx.uucp@germany.eu.net (NeXTmail OK).

-----------------------8<------------------------------------------
Dear Madams, dear Sirs,

as a company developing software for chemical and clinical subjects we are
planning to develope software for NeXT machines as workplace computers in
clinical laboratories. These workstations will have to serve different socalled
ONLINES (e. g. analyzers in clinical chemistry, hematology etc.).
There are up to eight analyzers per workplace in laboratory. the analyzers have
to be connected to the NeXT computer via asynchronous serial data links.

Exchanged data may consist of
        a) single characters containing status information of the analyzer
        b) data recordes containing test requistions rsp. test results
        c) poll messages to test whether counterpart is online

depending on logical states of the analyzers we have to read in messages from
rsp. write out messages to a single port containing single characters or data
sets with up to 2000 characters without any loss of data.
Data sets are terminated either by various characters (<ETX>, <EOT>, <CR> etc.)
or just by charcount.

Most of the analyzers don't care about the data they have sent out. If we don't
catch them at once, they are lost.
Hard / software handshake (DTR/RTS/, XON/XOFF) almost is not possible.

The form or length of messages sent by the analyzers may change due to their
internal states; so we are not able to expect messages in a well defined order
or form.

Some of the analyzers require response within 300 msecs.

Before considering any technical questions and programming facilities it is
essential for us to get information about following subjects:

Are there NeXT boards which can serve serial io-ports up to the required number
under described conditions?

Are there third party boards which are supported by NeXT computers?

Is there any possibility to connect a terminal server that can be programmed to
serve ONLINES in the above described manner?

We would be happy to get closer information about the hardware capabilities of
the NeXT machines to serve the analyzers mentioned above.


Sincerely
Peter Inde
EFL GmbH

--
EFL
Entwicklung + Laborservice GmbH
Schillingsweg 15
7630 Lahr
Tel.: 07821/21020
Fax: 07821/22200
e-mail: ds%dandsnx.uucp@germany.eu.net