Re: pilot-link fails: replace with coldsync?

[Andrew Arensburger <arensb ooblick com>]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Lars Gaarden wrote:
> Scott Otterson wrote:
> >	      Andrew Arensburger <arensb+CShackers ooblick com>
>
> > It looks as if the Linux serial port driver is flaky, and tends
> > to drop bytes at random.
>
> If you have a test-case for this, could you please post it
> to linux-kernel vger kernel org?

	I can back up a Palm under Linux and FreeBSD, and compare the
logs (or send them to you), if that's what you'd like.
	I can also try to whip up a small utility that puts the serial
port in raw mode and reads or writes data. That would probably be a
more useful diagnostic tool, but it'll take some time to whip up.

	BTW: *BSD has a utility called watch(8) that'll dump the
traffic on a serial port or tty line. While I was looking at this
problem, I wanted to use this to compare my logs against the OS's idea
of what was going through the serial port. Unfortunately, I couldn't
find such a utility for Linux. Does anyone know of any?

	ObThread: While I haven't looked at the gnome-pilot source, I
suspect it would be possible to make is use ColdSync's Palm
communication library (libpconn) instead of pilot-link. It would take
a fair amount of work, but it should be possible. Like dolphins and
sharks, the two libraries are similar in function, but differ wildly
in implementation specifics (then again, it might be possible to write
some kind of wrapper to ease the transition. As the saying goes,
there's no problem that can't be solved by adding another layer of
indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of
indirection).
	As for reliability, this library is the oldest part of the
ColdSync code, so it's the part that's been debugged most extensively.
I've only made a half-hearted attempt at separating it from the rest
of the ColdSync code, but I'd like to make it a separate package at
some point. If anyone's interested in using it with something other
than ColdSync, let me know and I can try to speed things up. If anyone
objects to the Artistic license on philosophical grounds, talk to me.
  
--
Andrew Arensburger                      This message *does* represent the
arensb ooblick com                      views of ooblick.com
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