Hello Peter!

03 May 04 09:54, Peter Knapper wrote to Mike Tripp:

 PK> The DB-9 and DB-25 Serial connectors, and the Centronics Parallel
 PK> printer connector have nothing to do with IBM, the are hardware
 PK> standards that existed long before IBM used them on the PC. The AT &
 PK> PS/2 connectors however are all IBM.

[...]

 PK> My main issue is the huge no. of existing environments that still
 PK> need FULLY FUNCTIONAL Serial support, not just with the connector,
 PK> but with the capability that the interface provides. The problem
 PK> comes from component integration, rather than physical design
 PK> issues, in their hurry to bring out "comparabile" devices, they
 PK> leave out certain critical elements of the overall interface.

Obviously you understand that there is more to an interface than the
selection of the physical connector...so it shouldn't be a surprise that
the royalties paid by PC vendors to IBM are for providing their interfaces
and not the presence of the standard connectors which might represent other
interfaces.

 PK> I have been involved in discussions regarding exactly WHAT Laptop
 PK> H/W is able to provide the functionality required to various
 PK> support groups, and the picture being built is not pretty, mainly
 PK> because the control signals need to be emulated where the H/W does
 PK> not exist to drive them natively. So far the generation of a
 PK> CORRECT (and some times varible length) BREAK signal seems to be
 PK> the main show stopper, to many it has been forgotten...

Obviously you understand that you have a specific hardware issue with a
specific hardware implementation.  This is not a general indication of the
state of the PC industry in the general, the notebook segment in
particular, nor evidence of some Microsoft conspiracy to somehow maximize
their profits by forcing you to buy USB hardware.  I'm quite confident that
their USB implementation is even more likely to be more broken.

Fortunately, Mike is interested in a virtual serial port implementation and
not a physical one...so he should be safe until the shareware programmers
start licensing the rights to faithfully emulate a "bad hardware
emulation on USB notebooks running Windows XP" mode.

.\\ike

--- GoldED 2.50+