Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
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From: jpletzke@ritz.mordor.com (Jonathan Pletzke)
Subject: Re: No support for serial I/O under Windows in VisualWorks2?
References: <3nk0de$h08@hustle.rahul.net>
Organization: Mordor International BBS
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 14:05:08 GMT
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Message-ID: <D7p5sL.AC0@ritz.mordor.com>
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I don't have a specific solution to your question, but here is some 
supplemental information.

Apparently, doing MIDI serial stuff straight through UNIX on PP does not 
cut the mustard either.  A project at the MIT media lab used unix and 
Smalltalk for the application, but had such problems (chalked up to the 
polling inside the PP Virtual Machine) that they ended up writing a 
network interface that talked to Macintosh, which in turn did the MIDI 
stuff.  So the connection was PP->TCP/IP->Mac/MIDI.

I too am very interested in the outcome of this "experiment" in doing 
high speed serial I/O with PP (or any others) especially as it pertains 
to MIDI.

 Craig Latta (Craig.Latta@NetJam.ORG) wrote:


: Hey--

: 	So I go to implement support for a MIDI interface in VisualWorks 2
: under Windows (yes, I know, very silly of me...). I figure a good test 
: to see if serial I/O is working would be to talk to a modem with the 
: Advanced Tools "terminal" (since the documentation says terminals will 
: open on the default serial port). I try this and [OSErrorHolder 
: unsupportedOperationSignal] gets raised. Then I notice that the
: PCTtyAccessor 
: class is abstract and the only concrete subclass is OS2TtyAccessor (and, 
: of course, there is no "PCTtyOptions" class).

: 	Rats. What's up with that? I could have sworn that there was serial I/O
: support for Windows in previous versions of ParcPlace Smalltalk. It got 
: taken out? Was this documented anwhere (besides in the behavior of the 
: system...)?

: 	What should I do in the meantime? I guess it's a choice between:
: 	
: *	switching from Windows to OS/2 (but buying another VM is expensive)
: *	switching to another machine entirely. The other platforms with 
: 	serial I/O support seem to be Unix and Mac. The Mac loses because 
: 	of a similar situation with Smalltalk sockets support, and Unix loses 
: 	because I want to do this on a portable machine (and no, I don't fancy 
: 	switching Smalltalk vendors...). Of course, buying a new machine would 
: 	also be expensive.
: *	filling in the blanks myself with UDPs or CPOK (which is another big can
: 	of worms). 

: 	Is there a serial and/or MIDI DLL somewhere which would help? Has someone
: already done all this?
: 	
: 	Any suggestions are appreciated, to Craig.Latta@NetJam.ORG. I'll
: summarize
: if there is interest. I would ask ParcPlace directly, but I'm not a
: technical 
: support subscriber (since I have about one question every couple of
: years), and 
: I'd rather not use my "one free support question" on something that
: probably 
: has a "you're hosed" answer...


: 	Thanks,
: 	
: -C

: 	
: --
: Craig Latta <Craig.Latta@NetJam.ORG>
: "Instant monotony! Just ad nauseum!"
