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- SIO.SYS and VSIO.SYS open beta.
-
- Copyright, 1993 By
- Raymond L. Gwinn
- 12469 Cavalier Drive
- Woodbridge, Virginia 22192
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- USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
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- SIO.SYS and VSIO.SYS are functional, but not exact, replacement
- for OS2's COM.SYS and VCOM.SYS. Documentation, beyond that given
- here, is not available.
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- A supporting FidoNet echomail conference called SIO_BETA is
- available from Bob Juge at 1:106/2000 (1-713-980-9671).
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- Messages/reports from program authors will be greatly
- appreciated. Messages may be sent directly to the SIO/VSIO
- author via CompuServe, 72570,157 (Ray Gwinn). Messages may also
- be sent via FidoNet netmail, using host routing, to 1:265/104 or
- directly to 1:265/104 from 3:00am to 6:00am EST (8:00am to
- 11:00am UTC).
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- SIO.SYS and VSIO.SYS are intended to be high performance Serial
- Input/Output routines. Some brain dead software may not work
- with these routines. Also, some perfectly good software may not
- work with these routines. In any case, if you have programs that
- do not work with SIO/VSIO installed let me know and, PLEASE
- CONTACT THE AUTHOR of that software also. Ask them to get a copy
- of SIO/VSIO and report any errors they find. It is not practical
- for me to set up and test all communications programs that are
- being used by OS2 users.
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- It is intended that SIO.SYS will accept the same command line
- parameters that COM.SYS uses. Unlike VCOM.SYS, VSIO.SYS requires
- no command line parameters. VSIO obtains all necessary
- information from SIO.SYS.
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- If you are using a serial mouse, the mouse device driver must be
- loaded before SIO/VSIO.
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- There seems to be some mis-behaved device drivers for OS2. If
- you have problems, try moving device drivers around in your
- CONFIG.SYS. In particular, I have had a lot of problems that
- seem to be the fault of Novell's OS2 requester device drivers.
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- Some (but not all) differences between COM.SYS and SIO.SYS are:
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- 1 - SIO.SYS insists upon using 16550A (or up) fifos. SIO.SYS
- does not allow application programs to disable the fifos.
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- 2 - SIO.SYS will accept any number above 50 as a baud rate.
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- 3 - The last decimal digit of a given baud rate must be zero.
- For example, 50, 110, and 115200 are valid while 75 and 134.5 are
- not. A baud rate of 75 will be rounded to 80 and 134.5 will be
- rounded to 130.
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- 4 - SIO.SYS is considerably faster than COM.SYS. Any timing
- dependant software (intentional or unintentional) may croak.
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- 5 - Half duplex has not been tested and probably does not work.
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- Some (but not all) differences between VCOM.SYS and VSIO.SYS are:
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- 1 - VSIO.SYS creates a virtual 16550A instead of a virtual
- 8250/16450.
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- 2 - VSIO.SYS does not virtualize the loopback mode of the 16550A.
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- 3 - VSIO.SYS is considerably faster than VCOM.SYS. Well written
- DOS programs can achieve throughput far in excess if 1000
- characters per second.
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- Sample CONFIG.SYS statements:
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- DEVICE=C:\SIO.SYS (1,3F8,4) (COM2:19200,2F8,IRQ3)
- DEVICE=C:\VSIO.SYS
-