Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!jade!eris!spencer
From: spencer@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Randy Spencer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: One more modem Please!
Keywords: Help me!
Message-ID: <6327@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 18 Dec 87 00:34:13 GMT
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: spencer@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Randy Spencer)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 51

In article <4300@garfield.UUCP> joseph@garfield.UUCP (Joseph Dawson) writes:
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>  How can I hook up a second modem to my A1000?

This is as good a time as any to start a new discussion on the net, so,
if you were building a second serial port for the Amiga, would you:

A:	Rewrite the serial.device so that it supports you or the
	built in port.  Address each as seperate unit numbers.

B:	Write a second serial device called something else and
	expect that programmers will allow users to open a named
	device, or mount the device as SER2: and use from the
	CLI.

Then comes all the other questions:

What do you do about preferences?  Currently you can only open the
onboard ports for the printer.device to talk to, how do you change that
for good, so that you can hang a serial printer on the new port.

How do you get software designers to acknowledge your board, in either
of the above situations the software designer has to either allow the
user to open the serial.device with a specific unit number, or has to
allow you to open a named device (like I want to open the parallel.device
and run a terminal program between two Amigas!).  Or do we send the 
programmers to talk to Dos Devices and open SER2:?

What do you do if you decide to just rewrite the serial.device, and then
someone else builds their own board and they rewrite the serial.device
also, the user is going to start getting confused.  If there are any
people out there working on serial boards and you want to be compatible
in such situations, please get in contact with me here or on Bix I am 
known as Infinity, but I am never logged on there, as I can't use Emacs!

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Ok, that is where I was about two weeks ago, I have pondered these questions
for some time, I have spoken with Bart@Amiga and Bryce@Hoser at length, and
we have not answered all these questions.  Is anyone interested in getting
in on this?  Anybody working on Telecommunications software?  Tony of VT100
fame?  Maybe the Max Elbowroom guys...?
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Randy Spencer      P.O. Box 4542   Berkeley  CA  94704        (415)222-7595 
spencer@mica.berkeley.edu        I N F I N I T Y         BBS: (415)222-9416
..ucbvax!mica!spencer            s o f t w a r e                  AAA-WH1M
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