BNU Description

    BNU is a  FOSSIL  compatible  Communications driver, suitable
    for use with the following (among  others) bulletin board and
    FidoNet(tm) mailer software:

     Fido v11,12  Tom Jennings, Fido Software
     BinkleyTerm  Vince Perriello, Bob Hartman, Alan Applegate,
                  & Bit Bucket Software
     Opus-CBCS    Wynn Wagner III, The POLE of Dallas
     QuickBBS     Adam Hudson
     TPBoard      John Schnieder & Rick Peterson
     SEAdog       Thom  Henderson, System Enhancement Associates
     D'Bridge     Chris Irwin
     FrontDoor    Joaquim Homrighausen, Interzone Software, Inc.

    It handles hardware  specific  aspects  of communications, to
    enable the above applications to run in multiple environments
    which are supported by a FOSSIL  compatible  driver.   BNU is
    designed for the IBM PC, XT, AT, AT/386 and PS/2  range under
    the MS-DOS operating  system  version 2.10 and above, OS/2 in
    'DOS compatibility' mode and under  PC-MOS/386.   It may also
    be compatible with other environments which emulate MS-DOS.

    The term 'FOSSIL'  is  short  for "Fido Opus SEAdog  Standard
    Interface Layer".  It  is  a  generic hardware interface used
    mainly by bulletin board systems  and Fidonet compatible mail
    software which evolved from the efforts of Wynn  Wagner,  Bob
    Hartman and Vince   Perriello.    The  current  "Revision  5"
    standard makes it possible for  a lot of software to run on a
    wide variety of hardware platforms capable of  running MS-DOS
    but with distinct and incompatible hardware.

    BNU's main task  is  communications  handling.  It is a fully
    interrupt driven communications   driver   which  effectively
    handles communications "in  background",  and   continues  to
    receive and transmit   characters   asynchronously  with  any
    program or application running.   The application itself need
    not be concerned   about   the  time  critical   aspects   of
    communications, nor the capabilities, limitations or features
    of the hardware itself.  These are all handled by BNU itself.

    BNU is one  of many FOSSIL drivers available.  BNU implements
    many features found in other(tm) FOSSIL drivers, sometimes in
    a slightly different  way.    Known   differences   will   be
    highlighted.

    This package contains BNU.COM, with the driver itself being a
    TSR program (Terminate and Stay Resident) which may be loaded
    and unloaded, activated  or  made  dormant "on-the-fly";  and
    also BNU.SYS, a  device  driver  implementation  loaded  from
    CONFIG.SYS.  This is not as 'flexible'  as using BNU.COM, but
    in general conserves some memory and allows loading  in  some
    environments where the TSR implementation cannot be used.

                      BNU Revision 5 FOSSIL Communications Driver
                                                     Version 1.70