Hier
How it works
CAPTURE talks to your communications programs via the INT-
14 interface. INT-14 is a hang-over from the earlier days of PCs,
as it is the BIOS interface used to talk to the serial ports. In fact,
the INT-14 BIOS services proved too slow to be of practical use,
as they did not use interrupt processing, so most software vendors
wrote code to directly interface to the serial port hardware. This
was unfortunate, since the BIOS was supposed to insulate
programmers from the specifics of the hardware. However, the
BIOS interface suits our purpose, as INT-14 calls can be
redirected to a program such as CAPTURE, and this allows the
"real" serial hardware to be on a different PC altogether.
Performance is not likely to become a problem, provided the
network is not overloaded, since Ethernet for example runs at
least 100 times faster than a PC serial port can.
OFFER uses interrupt-driven serial port handlers to ensure that
high serial data rates can be accommodated without problems.
For best performance at higher speeds, 16550 FIFO-buffered
UARTS are fully supported. In most cases even at 19.2k baud,
COMROUTE performance will be indistinguishable from direct
hardware connection.
Of course, your communications software must support the INT-
14 BIOS interface to be useable with COMROUTE, but many
current programs have this option.
mit heutiger Software ist das völlig inkompatibel.
