RE: [MiNT] pppd error messages

[Petr Stehlik <joy@sophics.cz>]

> > Btw. this whole thing with HS-Modem, RSVx.PRG and HSMINST.XDD is *very*
> > confusing, there must be some way to clean up this. Some possible solutions
> > could be...
> 
> a) MiNT already uses RSVF if it is installed through GEMDOS.

I know there's a lot of confusion between users that are trying to move
from TOS to MiNT completely but they can't because some of their
communication programs do not work under MiNT properly. Fiddling with
HSMINST, HSMODEM/MiNT running order and RSVx including renaming/sln-ing
various devices in U:\DEV\ causes some problems to vanish and some new to
appear. But AFAIK nobody has managed to get all basic comm apps working
under MiNT properly yet.

The basic comm apps are IMHO as follows:
- pppd (for Inet)
- CoNnect (for BBS)
- Semper (for Fidonet/NeST)
- XXX (an application that utilizes LAN port for communication with
various little devices like organizers etc)

Semper is probably the best and most used Fido mailer sw on Atari, that's
why I list it as the basic comm prg. Similarly the CoNnect is probably the
best terminal prg. Both apps were developed and tested with MiNT.

The usual problems that arise under MiNT are:
- pppd does not work (HSMODEM replaced MiNT functions?)

- Semper's hardware flow control doesn't work OK so you can't send
anything larger (receiving usually works OK)

- CoNnect does not work - sends chars but not receive them (I guess it
tried to use MiNT functions as the HSMODEM ones and it failed due to an
incompatibility?)

- CoNnect does not see the comm ports (under TOS it can detect Modem1,
Modem2 and Serial2 or LAN (on Falcon), while under MiNT it sees just
Serial port and nothing else).

- an app that should use LAN does not work at all (sorry I don't remember
its name so I can't be concrete - feel free to discard this point)

I don't know much about CoNnect's internals - I just believe it contains
both routines for direct HW programming and also for using RSVF (i.e.
HSMODEM - if installed and detected). I don't know which ones are used
under MiNT.

As for Semper - its author developed his own comm library (in PureC) that
tried to unify the serial port programming. Perhaps this library is still
wrong (even if author tried to make it MiNT compatible). I don't know.

I would welcome some notes and/or examples of proper coding of such comm
apps. A (shared) lib that would implement a COMM API would be best I think
(even if it's too late - I doubt the CoNnect and Semper could be updated
nowadays).

The best would perhaps be to do something with MiNT so that most of the
comm apps that do work under TOS would work under MiNT as well...

Petr