MV> DosOpen opens a file (or device) for which you give a name. Here you
 MV> are trying to open a file or device, whose name is in argv[ 1 ],
 MV> which, if I understand you correctly, is the (already open) file
 MV> handle for the com port.

 MV> So you don't have to use DosOpen at all. Just change the number held
 MV> in the string argv[ 1 ] to an integer, and you have the file handle
 MV> you can read from and write to:

 MV> HFILE ComHandle;
 MV> char pBufferArea[ 4096 ];
 MV> ULONG ulBufferLength, ulBytesRead, ulBytesWritten;
 MV> APIRET rc;

 MV> ComHandle = strtol( _argv[ 1 ], NULL, 10 ); /* assuming the handle was
 MV> passed in base 10 format */

Ugh... So there is a built-in fuction to convert the string.. errr... I've
always done that manually... Thanx!

 MV> ulBufferLength = 4096;  
 MV> rc = DosRead( ComHandle, pBufferArea, ulBufferLength, &BytesRead );

4096? Is that the maximum length a commandlineparameter can be?

 MV> ulBufferLength = strlen( pBufferArea);
 MV> rc = DosWrite( ComHandle, pBufferArea, ulBufferLength, &BytesWritten);

 MV> There is one problem with the above:
 MV> If the BBS program didn't tell the com driver to return a DosRead
 MV> after a certain period of time has expired, even if our buffer is not
 MV> full yet, the DosRead will never return until 4096 characters have
 MV> been received. To prevent this, the BBS program, right after using
 MV> DosOpen to open the com port, has to use a DosDevIoCtl call. For
 MV> information on this, look up ioctl functions, category 1 (async
 MV> functions), function 0x53 (set the device control block).

I'll look in to that, but that should have been taken are of already by Maximus.

Thanx!

/ Peter Schuller   [TeamOS/2]   petersch{at}kuai.se

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