Day Brown wrote: > [...] is run a signal out a com port telling a tranceiver what > frequencies to use.
Sure. You push a character into the UART and tell it to send. Ok so far... It's digital data, so then what? Where's it go out that port? > And take the I/O thru the sound ports, converting the audio signals > into data. An interrupt is generated, all other processing stops (completely) until that I/O is completed. Well written software might quickly free up the system, then process the audio signals outside of the interrupt handler. Good. Still, as more data comes in, everything pretty much hangs for those durations while the decoding occurs. It works, within certain limits. A lot depends on the raw speed of the hardware, and the quantity of input signals. And then there's the question: What the hell are you getting at? WHY are you taking audio input via the soundcard and doing what a modem does in but in software? Why are you pushing digital characters out the serial port, but receiving analog (?) via the sound card? > Now, if that data is for surfing, then you'd need a GUI OS that > supports Mozilla. What data? What are you doing here? You surely don't "need" a GUI to use the web! Lynx runs on DOS today. > But many of us remember being online with DOS at a BBS, and with the > data rate nowadays, seems like COMMO would still download .gif or > .jpg, and that you could shell out to look at the images, or listen > to sound files. Wait, you're NOT using Mozilla/GUI now? You mean shell out to an image viewer? Sure that works. 'Course the "download" stuff probably stops dead (unless there's more to this than COMMO you mentioned) but that works. > If menus required me to press a key to navigate a presentation, I'd > consider that a convenience. I can touch type. But in any case, you > could still us DOS as a portal that was too stupid to be crashed by > sabotage software. Viruses worked just fine with DOS. DOS systems were readily infected back in the glory days of the BBS. Downloading via any other network would be no different, and the same safeguards would be required as of any other OS. > And rather than multitask, use, as the 70$ example showed, another > piece of hardware. Hardware is cheap enough. You can devote your > desktop to a multimedia presentation tool if you want, but not have > any failure of that system break down all communications. You could > still do email thru the DOS portal to ask for help. Realizing there are still many single points-of-failure in your path. Yes, your PC may work but you can't send email if the $70 device is down. Adding hardware bits doesn't make a "system" more robust, though the individual components might still work (though not as the "system") if part of it fails. If the goal of all the odd bits of hardware you describe is to "send email", it doesn't matter WHAT failed if you're still unable to send mail. Also, that $70 solution isn't being touted for being a robust DOS box, but rather an "appliance" that runs a multitasking OS (Linux) that lets it multitask to do all of the things described. Sticking an XT on the network with it doesn't take away from the fact that the magic is attributed to that little box. > And if you have a problem with your service provider, there is > nothing to prevent you from having another antenna aimed at a > neighbor, or any other connection point. Which has NOTHING to do with DOS... > The rapid expansion of the internet has resulted in lots of > incompetent people being hired. Which is why all of the ISPs that are > available to me have server crashes so often, dropped carriers, or > severed feeds. Other rural users report the same to me. Ditto here. What's this to do with DOS? - Bob
