Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 00:49:47 +0000 (GMT)
From: alberto DOT vignani AT pmn DOT it (Alberto Vignani)
Subject: Thank you for v2.0
Apparently-To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

Hi guys.

I just finished writing a program for hi-speed serial communication (115k
baud) for a data acquisition application at work (sorry, no freeware).
I started one month ago with the specs of the previous version made with
Borland C 3.0 and the decision of going into full 32-bit mode; and, being
a Linuxer, I choose djgpp.

I began with 1.12m4, pdcurses and the async driver taken from go32/fs,
but this first experience was not very successful; even with the 16550
FIFO enabled, the system lose characters during disk writes (seems that
the trouble is in the real-mode interrupt processing, but I went not
very far debugging it).

Then I switched to the 2.0 beta, and really I must say: THANK YOU.

I had to recompile pdcurses, rewrite the assembly irq wrapper and
lock all the critical memory, but at the end the result is very good;
I never lose any character even when the system is busy writing to
disk or updating the screen, and I have a real FAST 32-bit application.
I have not seen any bug at the moment.

The program even runs under Windows 3.1, in a window, with variable
fonts, etc., at least when I'm using it in the 'simulation' mode
(that is, without the serial driver). With the driver, I see some
data flowing at 9600 bauds but with a lot of errors; at least, nothing
crashes (a great achievement under Windows!).

I would like to keep this software under DOS, but the users are asking
for GUI, and want 'the' GUI (the one they are accustomed to) ...
Of course, to really run under Windows I think I would have to replace
the serial driver.
The standard serial driver in Win 3.1 does not support 115k baud; of
course I could hack it just for the purpose, but I fear that the changes
needed are much more extensive.
Does someone have experiences about running high-speed com applications
under Win 3.1 (maybe with djgpp)? Should I delay the port waiting for
Win95?

I'm very happy being able to show the power and usefulness of freeware
tools to my bosses! (Don't know why, they were never so impressed by
Linux)

Please email me directly, as I'm not (yet) on the djgpp list.

Alberto Vignani - FIAT Research Center, Torino