#Serial Port speed
6 messages in this thread
Hi Sysop:
Can you give me an idea of the capabilities of a Visual Basic serial port
under Win 3.0 Enhanced? Does VB and Win 3 Enh provide serial data
buffering at the interrupt level for received data? If so, how many
characters of buffering are provided?
This turnkey application will run on a 486/33 with several tasks running
concurrently — including an imaging task. So it would not be suprising if
the reception of high speed data over a serial port required a more
sophisticated serial data support library.
Any ideas? Thanks, Eric
There are 2 Replies.
Eric,
There are three ways to do communications in Visual Basic:
1. The least practical is to use OPEN with "COMn", because it
depends on the default settings the user has set, i.e., you
cannot specify the baud, parity, data and stop bits.
2. The hard way is to use the Windows API calls directly. There are
two or three examples of doing this in DL1 and/or DL6. (They
may still be in the MSLANG forum.)
3. The easy way is to use an add-on library, such as my company's
communications library. In addition to making it very easy to
send and receive data, we provide many file transfer protocols
including XMODEM, YMODEM, YMODEM-G, ZMODEM and CompuServe B+.
As a bonus, the two versions of our product (one for QB/PDS and
the other for VB) are about 95% code-compatible. That means
you can move code between the two platforms with only minor
changes (if any).
With methods 2 and 3, you can specify the buffer size that Windows should
use for capturing data.
Mark
There is 1 Reply.
Mark,
Good to find someone with a comm library that runs under Win 3 Enh.
Does your library include a driver that handles interrupts before Win gets
control of them? (i.e. Is it Win API compatible?) Can you keep up with
some reasonable thruput by taking control of the UART? (9600 Baud with
other tasks running)
Is that software compatible with Dynacomm Async from FutureSoft? If so,
how? We will likely prototype our app with this software.
What is the name and price of this library? Information?? Where is it
available?
Thanks,
Eric
There is 1 Reply.
Eric,
We do not include a driver. Our library provides an easy-to-use wrapper
around the Windows API services. Because we use only standard Win API
calls, our library will work with any comm driver that is compatible with
the Windows COMM.DRV. I run it at 9600 on my system regularly and don't
have any problems.
We do *not* take control of the UART.
Is it compatible with Dynacomm Asynch? I have no idea. If it is not, then I
would suspect the other software because we aren't doing anything that is
undocumented.
The name is "MicroHelp Communications Library" and it's priced at $149.
I'll be happy to send you a brochure and demo if you'll leave me your
address in a MAIL message.
Mark
Hi Eric,
I would address this to both Ethan Winer and Mark Novisoft to see if
there product would address what you are trying to accomplish.
Don Funk
There is 1 Reply.
Don,
As much as I wish my name were spelled "Novisoft", it's not! <smile>
Mark