On (14 Nov 98) Karl Schneider whispered to All...

 KS> Aside from the fact that I'm rapidly approaching 'fossil' status
 KS> myself, I still haven't managed to figure out just what it means with
 KS> respect to communications.

 KS> I use one, (as probably is evident from stuff in my messages), but I
 KS> sure would like to know just what the hell it *is*, what it *does*,
 KS> and why it's necessary!

Here's the opening remarks from XOO's docs...

    X00 is  a Serial Input/Output  (SIO) communications  driver.   It
    provides  an interface  between  an application  program and  the
    serial communications hardware.

    X00 was  originally designed as  a FOSSIL  driver.  FOSSIL  is an
    acronym containing the first  character of several communications
    programs.   The FOSSIL specification is basically an extension of
    the PC's BIOS services for serial communications.

And here's the opening remarks from BNU's docs...

    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.

Does that help? :-)


*Paul*

... The name is Baud......, James Baud.

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