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BNU Revision 5 FOSSIL Communications Driver
Version 1.70
Some of BNU's unique and more interesting features are:
o BNU has been built to handle up to 4 COM ports
concurrently in up to 16 different configurations,
o It has an "open architecture" which will allow is
adaptation later in its development to support
multiport shared interrupt and intelligent
asynchronous IO boards,
o It supports the 16550 USART in fully buffered mode,
providing the capability of much higher baud rates,
performance and significantly less CPU overhead
especially in multitasking environments,
o The driver is extremely FAST, optimised for speed,
and takes up very little memory,
o Incorporates an optional "diagnostic" mode, so you
(the user) can inspect the state of the FOSSIL
driver itself; assisting in debugging and
optimisation of software being written to use
FOSSIL calls, and in attempting to determine
problems in software using a FOSSIL, such as a
mailer, BBS or BBS 'door',
o Has 'hooks' for an installable driver to support
network and multitasking software, forcing ill-
behaved processor intensive programs to give more
of their time-slice to the system when inactive or
when simply "polling" communications or keyboard
functions for activity or status reports,
o Allows 'fast' routing of screen output directly via
the ANSI driver, making "FOSSIL" screen output
calls significantly faster than going via DOS
itself,
o Allows for problems in some XT & AT BIOS' when
16550AN's are installed: very often a BIOS will
not 'see' the communications chip during startup
diagnostics - so BNU will force the BIOS to
recognise it automatically,
o Provides a full range of utility functions in the
same .COM file, including built-in carrier watch,
system reboot, lock baud rate and/or communications
parameters and allowing some PC BIOS compatible
non-FOSSIL aware software to take advantage of a
interrupt driven communications,
o Allows resizing of communications buffers and
locking/unlocking of baud rates and other
communications parameters "on-the-fly",
o Provides a means of displaying the currently loaded
driver's "status" and active parameters.
BNU Revision 5 FOSSIL Communications Driver
Version 1.70
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