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- deltaComm Development, PO Box 1185, Cary, NC 27512 USA
-
- (919)-460-4556 voice, (919)-460-4531 FAX, (919)-481-9399 BBS
-
- Telix Copyright (C) 1986,87,88,89,90,91,92,93 by deltaComm Development
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-
-
- October 13th, 1993 -- Notes on Telix 3.21 patch:
-
- This patch fixes a minor problem with regard to Telix sometimes not
- being able to turn off the 16550 FIFO, which can cause problems with
- other ill-behaved software such as Prodigy's software and certain fax
- software. This patch does NOT correct the problem in which a warm
- boot on certain AMI BIOS's can cause the comm port not to be seen or
- recognized at all. Only a BIOS replacement can correct this problem.
-
- Thanks to our German distributors (Elsa GmbH, Aachen), specifically
- Elsa's software engineers led by Svan Geuer, who discovered an
- undocumented (and highly illogical) dependency with regard to the
- order in which certain serial port registers are restored when
- closing the comm port. This patch corrects the problem, enabling
- Telix to correctly restore the state of the 16550 FIFO under all
- known circumstances.
-
- To apply this patch:
-
- 1) This patch must be applied to the UNBRANDED, REGISTERED copy of
- Telix. It cannot be applied to branded copies, or to the
- shareware version of Telix. The unbranded TELIX.EXE file can be
- found on the distribution diskette in the file TLX321-1.ZIP and
- is exactly 274,078 bytes, dated 02-05-93.
-
- 2) Place the files PATCH.EXE and PATCH.RTP in the same directory as
- the unbranded TELIX.EXE, and run the program PATCH.EXE from that
- subdirectory.
-
- 3) The resultant copy of TELIX.EXE may then be branded and used.
-
-
- For those inclined to ask, Telix restored the comm registers in the
- inverse order of which they were initialized. This included
- restoring the Interrupt ID (IID) register prior to the Line Control
- Register (LCR). It was found that (although it shouldn't matter), on
- some systems the restoration of the LCR register after the IID
- register would sometimes reactivate the FIFO (or possibly the
- contents of the initialized LCR would prevent the FIFO from being
- deactivated at all -- we're really not sure). By restoring the LCR
- to the original state before restoring the IID register, tests have
- confirmed that the 16550 FIFO is always thus restored. Don't ask
- why, since we don't know -- this behaviour isn't documented in the
- National Semiconductor specs *or* their sample code (their sample
- code also restores the IID before the LCR).
-
- Jeff Woods
- October 13th, 1993
-