the SMTP/POP protocols. But I can't get Windows to talk reliably with a raw async link. (I don't want to require SLIP or PPP, as lots of sites are too clueless to offer it.)
I need a robust communications library. It has to do as well as possible given an inherantly inreliable link. I've bought three commercial sibraries, and none work. ... The only way to communicate reliably over the serial port in Windows is to upgrade the UART in your serial port to a 16550AFN or equivalent. The standard UART (16450 in AT class machines) has no buffer and suffers from frequent dropouts due to data overwrite on receive. If you can't do that,
... then an error correcting protocol such as SLIP or PPP is required. Mike Johnson mpj@csn.org