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File name:	SER_STX.TXT			Revision date:	2000.09.02
Created by:	Ulf Ronald Andersson		Creation date:	1999.11.02
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This file describes the current development state of the serial driver for
STinG, as it has progressed since Peter 'disappeared' in mid-January 1999.
Recently he has confirmed that he wants me to handle the administration of
the future STinG development and has passed on all the sources to me.

The copyright to updated versions remains property of Peter Rottengatter,
and the release form remains FREEWARE, as originally defined by him.

Updates will be described below, in reverse chronological order.
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SERIAL.STX 1.21:	Beta release:	2000.08.31	Public:	2000.09.02
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Grzegorz Pawlik (in Poland) reported a bombing error after a major ISP
update, making all recent STinG versions unusable.  This was due to a
bug (now fixed) similar to that of 1.20, but with 32bit accesses, which
were used in the code implementing PPP_ECHO_REQUEST and PPP_ECHO_REPLY,
which is a kind of PPP level 'ping' operation, mostly unused. But it is
probably used by that ISP in implementing a 'detmon' service, to detach
any users whose machines have bombed or been turned off while online.
This version is now public, as Grzegorz reports that the fix works fine.
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SERIAL.STX 1.20:	Beta release:	1999.11.10	Public:	1999.11.10
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Sean Barbieri reported that version 1.19 bombed during PPP connection on ST.
Tests I made on an ST of mine showed it as consistent.  Some searching in
the source showed that part of the PPP engine used 16bit accesses even for
addresses that could be odd, which will bomb an ST.  And as the location of
one of those statements was identical with the location where I bombed in
my test there is no doubt about it.  The different methods used earlier
(partly) hid this bug before, by giving those accesses an address that was
even, far more often than now.  Now they only get that in 50% of the cases,
and that almost guarantees one odd occurrence before linking completes.

But this old bug is clearly the main reason why ST users have had more
problems getting connected reliably, than Falcon or TT users have. Those
computers are immune to this 'odd address' problem thanks to the 68030.

This release is a pure bugfix for that bug, and contains no other changes.
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SERIAL.STX 1.19:	Beta release:	1999.11.05	Public:	1999.11.07
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Eabe Kuik noted that version 1.18 counted huge amounts of dropped packets.
Actually those packets were not dropped, but the counter was incremented
under the wrong conditions.  That has now been corrected.

Beta testers have now confirmed proper operation of the new methods on as
widely unrelated systems as Hades 060 and MagiCPC, so I will now release
this version publicly as well.  Naturally I still want any bugs reported
ASAP, though I don't really expect any serious problems of that kind.

This is the first update component released with the new name of the STinG
developer group added to the 'author' field as "STinG Evolution Team".
At present That means myself and Vassili Papathanassiou, but in future
others may also be included in this group.  Only time can tell...  :-)
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SERIAL.STX 1.18:	Beta release:	1999.11.05
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After spending appx 24 hours using TTDIGGER to analyze HSModem components
I have discovered a method to emulate Fread and Fwrite both under MagiC and
SingleTOS (etc), without calling any TOS functions at all.  This allows even
higher speed than when using MagiC Fread and Fwrite in version 1.17, and now
the new speed is available regardless of operating system.

As this is a brand new method being used, never tried before, I'd appreciate
if all beta testers would make an effort to report their results to me ASAP.
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SERIAL.STX 1.17:	Compile date:	1999.11.03
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This is the first version to be produced after Peter left STinG development.
It contains some changes developed by Vassili Papathanassiou that provide
compatibility with a Modem 2 device driver for MagiCPC and also uses that
same method for handling data for other drivers as well, under MagiC of any
'flavour'.  The reason for this is that Fread and Fwrite give much higher
access speed, as they avoid calling HSModem for each character.  But this
method is illegal under singleTOS, so the old methods are used there.

These changes have then been debugged and (just a little) optimized by me
to produce a version suitable for wider distribution. (Which never occurred)
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End of file:	SER_STX.TXT
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