SIO, SIO2K

[RickCHodgin]

Message from Ray Gwinn:

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I am willing to open source SIO, SIO2K and all its parts, like VMODEM under a GPL license. But I cannot do it myself. If someone could come to my home in Beckley, WV I would let them work with it and provide what help I can.

It would not be a small effort, could be as much as two weeks for a very good programmer. All my stuff is in 386 assembler and I use the advanced features of MASM. Many assembler programmers would be confused by the code. I even use PERL scripts during the make process. It could also be as short as a few hours, if the computer is dead.
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anyone from US to help?

OS4User, I am willing.  Please hook me up with Ray.

UPDATE:  Sent a PM.

[OS4User]

OS4User, I am willing.  Please hook me up with Ray.

UPDATE:  Sent a PM.

I do not have a direct contact with Ray. I just passed the message from other person (he is not available now). As far as I know he contacted Ray in Facebook, so you can also try.
When the person contacted Ray appears - I will ask details and let you know.

[RickCHodgin]

OS4User, I am willing.  Please hook me up with Ray.

UPDATE:  Sent a PM.

I do not have a direct contact with Ray. I just passed the message from other person (he is now available now). As far as I know he contacted Ray in Facebook, so you can also try.
When the person contacted Ray appears - I will ask details and let you know.

Thank you.  I'll try to see if I can contact him on Facebook.

[RickCHodgin]

If he's in Beckley, it's only about 5.5 hrs away from where I live.  I could drive there Friday, meet with him Saturday and Sunday, and drive back Sunday.

[Fritz Chwolka]

And now  ?

What is the status ?

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

If there is any volunteer near Beckley please let me know.

Regards

[Roderick Klein]

SInce the community seems to want to have the sources, I do however think its not really worth the effort since the code is getting so old. Its feels a bit like trying to get Daniella to open source here danis506.add driver now.  Would this driver work with the current PCI cards ?

Anyway if the computer can get online I can login with the VOICE remote desktop software. ZIP up the stuff and uploaded it somewhere. I do not think somebody is going to drive up to get the sources. Otherwhise somebody would have offered todo so...

What is Ray his email address ?

Roderick

[fusion]

There is currently a fellow on Fidonet stating he is in talks with Ray Gwinn to get the source code, and intends to keep it closed source. Does anyone still have contact with him? Would be sad to see it further hidden away, if only just as another good example of OS/2 driver development.

[Neil Waldhauer]

Even the IBM drivers work with current PCI serial cards.

What would be nice is serial support to work with PCIe cards. An active developer could get it done.

USB serial support is pretty good, so we do not really lack for solutions.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Fusion

I had been talking with Ray Gwinn for aprox five years via Facebook, requesting him to open source SIO2K. He initially agreed, but when the time comes to share the source code, I don't know why he pulls back. First he wanted to be sure someone will keep the working on this code, later he wanted someone to goes to his hoome to pick up the code and later he said that he can only make available source code on his own ftp (for legal reassons) and that his ISP didn't allow that.

I'm trying to contact him one more time to see what he told me.

Regards

[Roderick Klein]

Even the IBM drivers work with current PCI serial cards.

What would be nice is serial support to work with PCIe cards. An active developer could get it done.

USB serial support is pretty good, so we do not really lack for solutions.

Well there is text file in the OS2 or OS2BOOT you can update and see if PSCOM that ArcaOS ships with can be made to work.
David from AN has continued to update PL203 support in USBCOM.SYS driver.

For me SIO2K has become a write off. If the community could have had the code 10 years ago.
But even if we have thc code. We have plenty of samples floating around.

Then the legal issue that popups. Is Ray Gwiin his code based on DDK code yes or no ? So even if somebody has the code what could you do with it ? Also who could work on it ?

If the goal is to get PCI/PCIe  cards to support serial ports. I think the bottom line is that its easier to get PSCOM.SYS updated then to try and get SIO2K.SYS its sources. Its light years behind is my guess. Somebody would need a lot of time to update support for PCI serial ports.

That is my take on it.

Roderick Klein

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I can only answer this one:

Then the legal issue that popups. Is Ray Gwiin his code based on DDK code yes or no ?

If it is based on the IBM DDK it can be turn into a freeware close source collaborative project on a non public repository just like Lars is doing with the Netlabs USB drivers. An organisation (like Netlabs) can keep the ownership of the changes and control it as a collaborative project between developers members that comply to the IBM DDK license.

I even think we should grab all IBM DDK source code on a non public repository and try to consolidate the changes and improvements to those drivers as a group of people that has and agree to the IBM DDK license. And also have a common agreement to give the changes of the source code to an organisation (like Netlabs) and avoid someone to take the sole ownership of the changed source code.

Regards

[Lars]

If the goal is to get PCI/PCIe  cards to support serial ports. I think the bottom line is that its easier to get PSCOM.SYS updated then to try and get SIO2K.SYS its sources. Its light years behind is my guess. Somebody would need a lot of time to update support for PCI serial ports.

That is my take on it.

Roderick Klein

PSCOM.SYS is limited to devices that use I/O mapped registers and that support the "standard/compatibilty" set of registers (transmit reg, receive reg, mode reg, ine reg etc.).
Of course, PSCOM.SYS cannot support any "high performance" specifics. Finally, PSCOM.SYS is also limited by "mode.com" because that is the command line tool to configure serial ports (for those apps that do not support that natively) and that tool supports some upper baud limit that I forgot and I think PSCOM.SYS follows that limit. Of course, replacing mode.com with something more up-to-date (and to offer higher baud rates in PSCOM.SYS) is possible.

I personally have a card that has memory mapped registers and therefore cannot be used with PSCOM.SYS (for example it makes use of its memory mapping capabilities to access the whole receive buffer at once without the need to read from a FIFO and therefore offering the fastest access method possible).
My gut feeling is that the use of I/O mapped registers is slowly dying because I/O address space is pretty scarce (compared to memory address space), but it would need some analysis/check of modern serial cards what chips they use (if it offers the standard set of registers) and if their register access is I/O mapped or memory mapped. If there are plenty of cards around that use I/O address space, then yes, updating PSCOM.SYS would be the way to go.