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OS/2 Shareware BBS: 4 Drivers
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04-Drivers.zip
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PROGINFO
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SPEW.DOC
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1993-06-21
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SPEW.DOC
Overview:
SPEW is a simple little test program to verify existence and basic
functionality of Async Serial Communications devices. Though designed
to work with any Async device that complies with the OS/2 API, it is
provided -- allong with full source code -- as a test tool for DigiBoard
hardware and device drivers. It is text-only program designed to run in
in a "OS/2 Full Screen" environment.
Depending on command line arguments, SPEW can individually or collectively
test device behavior with regard to Modem Signals, data throughput, and
machine resource utilization. It is a very simple program and is not
intended to be a serious device performance testing or benchmarking
tool.
The full test suite will require a "loopback" connector on the port
being tested. This connector should jumper the RS-232 signals together
thus:
Tx--Rx DTR--CD--RI RTS--CTS
Functions:
MODEM SIGNALS:
When SPEW tests modem signal behaviour, it is simply issuing OS/2
API DosDevIOCtl() command to the device. It first retrieves the
current signal, then raises both DTR,RTS, then drops just RTS, then
drops just DTR, then drops both. At each stage it makes further
DosDevIOCtl calls to retrieve the the results of the above changes
and reports them. As the DTR and RTS signals are altered, you should
at the very minimum see the DTR,RTS signals obey the changes. Also,
depending on the kind of cabling you have connected to the device,
other signals (DSR,CD,CTS,RI) should follow the line they are tied to.
If you wish to bypass the modem signal testing phase, specify the
'-s' (NO-SIGNALS) flag on the comman line.
DATA THROUGHPUT:
SPEW by default will assume that a "loopback" is connected to the
device such that all data that is transmitted is automatically
looped-back to the same device. This is to permit the testing of
both DosRead and DosWrite system calls on the device without having
to provide an external source of data to Read. In this case, SPEW
will attempt to Read back all the test data that it has transmitted
and will do some cursory verification of that data.
Without a looback connector, SPEW can still perform Transmit-only
testing though no verification of the output is possible. This can
be useful to test the basic accessibility of the device name(s) to
application programs.
If you do not have a loopback connector or would like to bypass the
Read/Verify phase of SPEW, specify the '-l' (NO-LOOPBACK) flag on the
command line.
CPU UTILIZATION:
SPEW by default will attempt to give an idea of how much of the
machine resources available to it are consumed by sustaining the
level of throughput specified. Ofcourse doing loopback simultaneous
transmit and receive (Full Duplex) tests will result in lower
throughput numbers and more computer resources (CPU) utilized.
SPEW takes a guess at this by running a background thread at lo
priority that simply does iterations of integer calculations.
Note that this background thread is designed to run at every idle
opportunity so OTHER processes (eg. BonAmi CPU MONITOR) that are
attempting comperable monitoring tasks will report that close to
100% of the CPU is in use.
If you do not wish to have this background thread thus calculate CPU
utilization for you, specify the '-c' (NO-CPU) option on the
command line.
Examples:
>spew com1
## this will assume a loopback connector on COM1 and run modem signal tests
## followed by full duplex data throughput tests with CPU utilization reports
>spew com 1,8
## this will assume a loopback connector on ALL the devices: COM1,COM2...COM8
## and run modem signal tests on EACH one in turn (one at at time); followed
## by full duplex data throughput tests with CPU utilization reports on all
## ports in PARALLEL (one data throughput thread per channel)
>spew -sl com 1,8
## this will skip the modem-signal and loopback Read tests and perform
## pure transmit tests on all devices COM1,COM2...COM8 in parallel, reporting
## performance and CPU utilization statistics.
>spew -cl com 7,8
## this will skip the loopback Read tests and perform (one device at a time)
## modem signal tests followed by transmit-only tests of the port but no
## CPU utilization information will be generated.