In message Wed, 27 Oct 1993 10:10:04 -0600 (MDT), mpjohnso@nyx.cs.du.edu (Michael Johnson) writes:

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.

A 16550 is clearly a big help, but Microsoft admits that their comm.drv fails often when you are using speeds greater than 4800. I have 16550's in my PC. A step in the right direction is TurboComm, a replacement driver, but that is expensive. A hardware solution is to use an intellegent serial card, like Hayes ESP or Telcor's T/Port. An O/S solution is to use a real operating system, :-) I want a no cost, MS-Windows solution. But I think folks read too much into my use of "robust" NUpop works fine as a DOS program without end-to-end. I simply want that functionality in a Windows program. No more, no less. I'm aiming low end, the mass market with a 386sx and a 2400 modem. Folks like me with a network of PCs in their house and even cypherpunks are not my market. The English majors, history and art majors are the folks I envision when I see a "user" Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell@netcom.com Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>