Hi Mike:

It was Saturday May 24 2003. "Win9x and Arachne ?," murmured you
to Richard.

 RT>> Win95, Win98, Win98SE, and WinME _will_ allow hardware to be directly
 RT>> manipulated by applications.  It's the WinNT-series of OSs -- WinNT4,
 RT>> WinXP, Win2k series -- that won't

 MP> So, WinXP will *not* work with a DOS comm/BBS program?  Interesting.

That can't be right.

One application I look after at work is an ancient Clipper program that
sends faxes via a modem attached to a local com port. It runs on an NT4
system, and works fine.

I suspect - if the first statement above is true - that the OS intercepts
calls to the hardware and handles them itself, whether they come from a
program running in a DOS box or a Windows app.

Bests,

Tim

--- GoldED 3.0.1-os1 at Oblivion