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'cFos/2' readme file ---------------------------------------------------------------- Dear user, This README.OS2 file contains only important information. A full fledged documentation of the same quality as the 'cFos' documentation CFOS.{DOC|ENG} will be available soon. Refer to the 'cFos' documentation in case of questions. Be sure to read the WHATSNEW file if you alreay have cFos in use. It contains a lot of additional infos and changes! Check ORDER.* to order 'cFos/2'. Before you start: ----------------- If you write mail to us concerning 'cFos/2' be sure to include the following header. We WILL NOT answer ANY MAIL without this header. Please include it in EVERY MAIL, even in replies and even if we replied a lot of times. We will get a big bunch of bug-report-mails and this is neccessary if we shall be able to handle this flood of eMail. OS/2 Version: x.xxx (include internal revision if possible) CPU type and clock rate: xxxxx ISDN board name: xxxxxxx CAPI Manufacturer: xxxxxxxxxx CAPI Version: x.xxx (we need to know the version of the implementation of that CAPI, not of the specification. So please don't say "CAPI v1.1") 'cFos/2' Version and Beta level: 0.xx Beta xxx Application software name and version: xxxxxx If you preceed your mails with this, we will be able to handle your reports efficiently. Please address every mail to "cfos-os2-bugs, 2:2453/30" (fidonet) or "cfos-os2-bugs@zaphod.infox.com" (internet). Be prepared that we eventually will not answer your letter but will write an answer in CFOS_HELP or notice your comments without response. CFOS_HELP is the international (though mostly in German) fidonet help conference for 'cFos' and 'cFos/2'. Feel free to post questions and comments to this area. If you currently have no connection to CFOS_HELP, here are some folx that have: 2:24/64, 2:24/901, 2:24/999, 2:240/5002, 2:240/5500, 2:2450/10, 2:2453/2, 2:301/1, 2:301/2, 2:310/1212 2:310/3, 2:317/7, 2:318/2 Please ask one of them or your echomail uplink for this area, BUT NOT US. It is impossible for us to deliver CFOS_HELP to every net (or node) individually. CFOS_HELP is moderated by the authors of 'cFos'. Rules are in CFOSHELP.RUL. This area is an 'official' Fidonet german backbone echo. 'cFos/2': Registering --------------------- If you like to register 'cFos/2', simply fill out the ORDER.DOC, ORDER.ENG or another of the ORDER.* files and send it to us or use CFOSCFG (in a DOS box) to order. The key-file must reside in the same directory as CFOS.SYS resides in and must be named CFOS.KEY. 'cFos/2': What does it do? -------------------------- 'cFos/2' is an OS/2 physical device driver that enables you to use your ISDN board as if it were a "normal" modem. You can use all your favorite OS/2 modem software! 'cFos/2' adds a character device to your system and you may set your programs to use this device name and will find a "modem" with AT commands etc. behind this device. In order to operate, 'cFos/2' needs to be loaded AFTER your ISDN CAPI drivers in CONFIG.SYS, and these drivers must be implemented as physical device drivers as well. If all goes well, 'cFos/2' will load, allocate some memory, do some init's, display some messages and your system is ready for ISDN! 'cFos/2' does now run with both CAPI 1.1 and CAPI 2.0. 'cFos/2': How do I load it? --------------------------- You may specify the device(s) and switches on the commandline. Some switches are special to the OS/2 version, others have the same meaning as under DOS with 'cFos'. Name as many character devices as you need. Use COMx for those programs that only run on COMx device names. Your commandline looks like this: DEVICE=C:\CFOS\CFOS.SYS <devicename(s)> <switches> if you load cFos/2 for CAPI 1.1. If you like to use CAPI 2.0 use: DEVICE=C:\CFOS\CFOS20.SYS <devicename(s)> <switches> Replace <devicename> with your device's name, e.g. COM3. Note that you may load 'cFos/2' only once, even for multiple ports. use "DEVICE=CFOS.SYS COM3 COM4", for example. Note furthermore, that you can NOT use the -c switches to specify the COM ports as you would do with cFos/DOS. For those of you familiar with 'cFos' (for DOS) the following info may be useful: 'cFos/2' loads for as many ports as you specify devices, max 30 in the registered version. The shareware version supports 2 ports at a time. 'cFos/2' uses an alternate monochrome monitor if you specify the -ja switch. On this monitor traces and the statusline are displayed. 'cFos/2' uses receive and transmit buffers of a default of 8 kbytes each (defaults are chosen on the settings of -w and -b switches). Use the -r and -t switches to adjust the buffer sizes if needed. Other switches that are available are: -w set windowsize -b set blocksize -j0 enable callerid repair -ja enable alternate monochrome debug monitor -jp enable passive B3 connection -jr disable CAPI reregistering -jv disable V.110 B3 protocol -jy ignore DTR signal -kc set open and close function calls to leave the DTR signal unchanged. THIS MAY BE DANGEROUS. ONLY USE IF NEEDED! -kn enable API_SET_SIGNAL (0:0) before API_RELEASE. This may be good behaviour, but crashes some CAPI's. Use this switch for debugging. -kw wait for an ENTER after loading -kx behave like SIO (see note 1 below) Switches for the registered version of cFos/2: -aX Add an auxiliary port for channel bundling with controller X For a documentation of the switches, read the CFOS.ENG documentation file. Note 1: The SIO specification differs from the spec by IBM in one important point: The set device control block function (set DCB, IOCTL 1/53). Under COM.SYS changing DTR control mode from 1 to 0 drops DTR, changing it from 0 to 1 raises DTR. Under SIO this only controls the handling of DTR when a COM port is opened or closed. If control mode is set to 0, DTR won't change when the port is closed/opened. If set to 1, DTR is raised on open and dropped on close. If you have trouble dropping DTR (as, for example, with Binkley/2 2.60 XE) DO NOT use -kx (resp. set S10.12=0). If you have trouble with spawned programs (i.e. the connection is terminated when one application spawns another), try -kx, resp. set S10.12=1. You may use the S10.12 bit to control the mode on each port seperately, while -kx set S10.12 to 1 on all ports. Before you start using any unattended communication software check if it is hanging up properly! If not, try the other S10.12 setting in your init string. If you do not specify any device name, 'cFos/2' loads with "ISDN" as the device name. Known Bugs : ------------ -- The V.42bis compression has sometimes CRC errors while transmitting. -- Problems with either dropping carrier or spawning programs result from the different ways COM.SYS and SIO.SYS work. See "How do I load it", Note 1. -- Teles CAPI 3.10 has problems with more than one ISDN board. Incoming calls may not be reported or you may get ERROR/LISTEN after a while. This is due to an error in TELES CAPI. We currently do not know any workaround for this. Ask TELES. If you find other bugs (or think you've done), first check the README.OS2 file (this one) for some additional information. If your bug stays, please write an eMail to the above address or in CFOS_HELP. Be sure to provide us with the information in the header of your mail (see above). Do NOT send fax'es or surface mail; your letter would stay unanswered. Please do NOT call us voice. We need our time to improve 'cFos' for you! Some technical info: -------------------- 'cFos/2' is an OS/2 level 3 device driver with DOSDevIOCtl2. It includes all Category 1 IOCtl functions described in the "IBM Physical Device Driver Reference, Second Edition" as of March 1994. It does not support deinstall so far. 'cFos/2' devices must be opened before use and closed afterwards. 'cFos/2' does NOT feature: -- XON/XOFF stripping in incoming data -- usage of the error replacement character -- null stripping -- automatic RTS or DTR control modes. Currently they may be activated, but you will never see RTS or DTR change. -- +++ hangup sequence (use DTR drop instead) -- a statusline on the primary display. It is only possible to display one on a secondary HGC display using the -ja switch. Because of some OS/2 restrictions, 'cFos/2' does some initialisations in the first access to the device driver. I.e. when you first call any function (excluding shutdown) of a cFos-device, 'cFos/2' registers at the CAPI, installs the signal handler and more. 'cFos/2' checks the signalling with CAPI and waits up to 5 seconds for a reply from CAPI. If there is no reply from CAPI, 'cFos/2' won't work and will only issue errors when you try to dial out. The error code will be something like 0x60??. In case of trouble try an ATI6 command to get some more information. 'cFos/2' is currently tested with: ---------------------------------- OS/2 2.11 with TELES S0.16, CAPI 2.92, 2.95 NCP P/16, CAPI 1.3 Diehl Diva, CAPI 5.00 AVM B1 V2.0, CAPI Rev 8.1 ITK iX1 V1.2, CAPI 1.05 HST Saphir, CAPI 1.3 (rev 04) OS/2 Warp with HST Saphir, CAPI v1.3 - v1.4, CAPI 1.1 and 2.0 AVM B1 V2.0, CAPI Rev 8.1 ELSA PCF/Pro, CAPI 0.10 of 16-May-95 BinTec BIANCA, CAPI 1.50 of 10-Apr-95 TELES S0.16.3, CAPI 3.10 ZOC 2.05 - 2.13, TE/2 1.30, PMComm 2.20, Maximus/2 2.02, LoraBBS 2.40B4, BinkleyTerm OS/2 2.50 EE Beta E3-32, Xenia/2 1.98, MainDoor/2 0.99b, UUPC/extended 1.12j, Warp Internet Access Kit, Cantaloup/2 Beta 0.73, UUGate's uucico 0.33, CKermit 5A(190), OS2CIM 2.0.1, OS/2 ppp 2.00 Rev 1.8, PCBoard/2 15.22, Lotus Notes, OS/2 WebExplorer, Infimail 1.34 Comments to some hard/software: TELES See note under "Known bugs". Diehl Diva Elder versions of Diva CAPI are unable to transmit data with 2k frames without errors. If you set the maximum transmit frame size (S28) to 1024 no problems occure. Either do this or get a new version of CAPI. AVM B1, CAPI Rev. 8.1 You have to run the ISDNLOAD program *before* you ACCESS the 'cFos/2' ports the first time (you must LOAD 'cFos/2' before ISDNLOAD, of course). It was reported that the system shutdown hangs with 'cFos/2' and the AVM B1. If it does, please give us a hint. ITK iX1, CAPI 1.05 ITK CAPI has problems with system crashes once in a while. This seems to be a problem of ITK, not 'cFos/2'. You should set S28=1024 to inhibit Zmodem CRC errors when uploading. You need to run IXLOAD *before* you access cFos/2 the *first* time. ITK CAPI does not work with the -kn switch. ITK told us that the CAPI 1.05 was not very stable under Warp. Use CAPI 1.06. ELSA PCF/Pro, CAPI 0.10 To run 'cFos/2' with ELSA CAPI you need to set the -ks switch on the commandline. If you don't, the system will crash when you do a shutdown. HST/Janussoft boards, NCP boards Elder versions of HST CAPI required -ks to be set, otherwise they crashed at shutdown. Setting this switch won't do any harm with CAPI, so just use it for safety. Starting with CAPI 1.3 rev 05 beta04 this should no longer be necessary. UUGate uucico It seems that uucico does not raise the DTR signal before sending data to the comport. Load 'cFos/2' with -jy to ignore the DTR setting. Note that this can cause trouble in dropping DTR to hang up. PCBoard/2 You need to set the -kx switch (resp. use S10.12) to run PCBoard/2. InterMail 2.29e I tested a demo version of InterMail. It has support for native OS/2 COM-access, i.e. InterMail (in an OS/2-DOS-box) uses the same function calls as a native OS/2 application would do. Unfortunately, the downloads had CRC errors and the uploads from the terminal are quite slow; but the uploads in the mailer are really fast. We are investigating on this problem. IM runs ok with the -kx switch. Use VCFOS if you have problems with the Intermail OS/2 COM port access. OS2CIM I tested OS2CIM here and it ran quite fine, but had a bug in the routines that set the modem signals via IOCTL function 0x46 (cat 1). The upper 6 bits of the masks must be 0, but they aren't always. 'cFos/2' set the known signals to the desired values but issues an error. If anyone can get this to the programmers of OS2CIM (or mail me their address), then i would be glad (and could remove this paragraph). BinkleyTerm/2 Some versions seem to need the -kx switch to spawn external applications (ie. BBS'es), others can no longer drop DTR when -kx is set (eg. Binkley/2 2.60 XE). Test it before use. See note 1 in the switches section for more info. Internet Access Kit The TONLINE.CMD file enables connections to T-Online in Germany via SLIPPM and 'cFos/2'. This file updates the TONLINE.CMD of the T-Online CD. You need to set the dial string to ATB6D to connect to T-Online. OS/2 LanServer 4.0 It is possible to share the 'cFos/2' ports with a NET ALIAS command. If you want to share more than 2 ports in total, change the maxchdevq and maxchdevs settings in ibmlan.ini. Thanx to Franz Leippert for this hint. OS/2 LanDistance Does not work with cFos, because it programs the serial port hardware. If you need some newer CAPI version, try to get it from your dealer, capi manufacturer, etc. first. If not otherwise possible, you may try to request/download it from our mailbox, area ISDN. How to get new versions? ------------------------ Versions are named something like CF2_xxxx.ZIP, where 'xxxx' is a version number like '081C'. See AVAIL.DOC to find out where to get the latest versions. Credits: -------- Thanx very much to the following people for their help, advice and/or time: Joern Bardewyck, Kalle Braun, Rainer Schuetze, Dennis Rowe (for his sample device driver code), Michael Buenter, Heinz-Otto Scheid (for his patience), Wim Abels and Patrick Bosch. Thanx to the following companies for their help and boards to test with: HST, TELES, Diehl, NCP, AVM, ITK, ELSA, BinTec. Plans for the future: --------------------- -- Implement all features that 'cFos' (for DOS) currently has. -- Add a utility for some PM window with full featured 'cFos/2' status display. -- Add an easy-to-use installation program. End of file ----------- Have fun, thanx for using 'cFos/2'.