DOS ain't dead

MODE command (Developers)

posted by kerravon, Ligao, Free World North, 02.11.2021, 21:22

> > In fact, even "com1"
> > should be abstracted and changed to perhaps
> > "external:eternal-september.org:119"
>
> > I don't really understand this. I'm basically trying
> > to connect to something that looks like a BBS. That's
> > the paradigm I like. I don't like doing TCP/IP calls.
> > I like the simplicity of a serial port.
>
> IMHO you are remarkably clueless in what you are 'designing'.

Note that it is already implemented. I'm now
looking to see whether the design should be
modified, or maybe the C standard modified.

> even skipping the hard hardware level (RS232, RS422, RS485),
> soft hardware level (baud rate, parity, etc.)

I am doing that via an effective MODE command
in autoexec.bat. Is that a problem? It's working
fine.

> COM as a blocking call is hugely useless.

It's working fine.

> just imaging calling your "external:eternal-september.org:119" as a
> blocking call.

No need to imagine it, I've used it.

> forgot to plugin modem line? wait a minute and reboot.
> forgot to power up the modem ? wait a minute and reboot.
>
> DNS resolver (eternal-september.org) not online? reboot.
>
> eternal-september.org on maintenance or power failure? reboot.

So far I've never had to reboot for any of those
reasons, but you are correct, I will reboot if I
encounter a problem. This is single-tasking
MSDOS equivalent. It's not a big deal.

And when it works, which 99% of the time it does,
you will be able to download source code, using
zmodem, to get a non-blocking comms program to
replace it. That is my actual goal. To provide,
using C90, the tools required to make non-C90
software if you desire non-C90 features.

> your C90 everything design is simply not suited to real-world
> communication.

Sure. And the lack of a GUI is going to put some
people off too, but you have the tools to write
or download a GUI too.

> the socket interface was invented/designed for exactly this purpose.

It wasn't possible to extend C90 slightly? There
couldn't have been a "don't block" setvbuf call
for example?

> of course, you may develop a TSR that does all this TCP/IP stuff and looks
> on top like
> fd = fopen("external:eternal-september.org:119", "r+b"),

Can you please elaborate on your TSR idea?

> but 32-bit MSDOS won't help in implementing it.

32-bit MSDOS should be equally capable of
implementing it as 16-bit MSDOS, shouldn't it?

Thanks. Paul.

Complete thread:

• MODE command - kerravon, 14.10.2021, 12:34 (Developers)
  • MODE command - bretjohn, 14.10.2021, 17:36
    • MODE command - kerravon, 15.10.2021, 00:29
      • MODE command - bretjohn, 15.10.2021, 07:29
        • MODE command - kerravon, 15.10.2021, 07:42
          • MODE command - bretjohn, 16.10.2021, 00:50
            • MODE command - kerravon, 16.10.2021, 02:07
              • MODE command - RayeR, 18.10.2021, 21:44
  • MODE command - DosWorld, 22.10.2021, 03:35
    • MODE command - kerravon, 23.10.2021, 01:50
      • MODE command - DosWorld, 01.11.2021, 19:05
        • MODE command - kerravon, 01.11.2021, 20:02
          • MODE command - tom, 02.11.2021, 18:53
            • MODE command - kerravon, 02.11.2021, 21:22