rac@sherpa.UUCP (Roger A. Cornelius) (03/09/89)
A friend of mine is looking for a com spooler/buffer (in software)
similar to the software print spoolers available. My friends wife is
blind, and they have some type of a speech synthesizer/software combination
which writes directly to the com port.
The problem is, when a bunch of text gets dumped to the speech board,
it can take several (many) minutes for it to be synthesized and output
via the speaker. This ties up the machine, and sometimes locks it up
if it really gets overloaded. It would be nice to continue working
while the buffered data gets spit out at whatever pace it can handle.
He's tried MODE, and various combinations of redirecting things back
and forth without any luck. So, to sum up, I guess what my friend wants
is something (in software) that will buffer data going to a com port,
or if anyone has any other suggestions on how to solve the problem, I'm
sure he'd be grateful.
Thanks,
Roger
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Roger Cornelius rac@sherpa
uunet!sherpa!racu-dmfloy%ug.utah.edu@wasatch.UUCP (Daniel M Floyd) (03/10/89)
In article <17@sherpa.UUCP> rac@sherpa.UUCP (Roger A. Cornelius) writes: > >A friend of mine is looking for a com spooler/buffer (in software)... The problem is straight forward. The answer is too. The IMPLEMENTATION of the answer can be DIFFICULT indeed. (Unless he can gaurantee an average ouput greater than or equal to the average input, your friend is stuck. Eventually any buffer would fill up under such circumstances.) The solution is, of course to either find a device driver like you want, or write one. The DOS manuals explain device drivers and point how to do it. There is at least one program that does almost what your friend wants. It's a program by Arthur Bishop (I think that's the name) and it is sort of a public domain or share ware type thing. It's half assembly and half Turbo Pascal. Simple enough to modify; but, it will still take a bit of work even for an experienced programmer. Dan Floyd 8<D=
pete@wlbr.EATON.COM (Pete Lyall) (03/11/89)
There's a spooler package on CompuServe's IBMHW forum (I think - you
could also use the file finder forum (Go IBMFF) to look it up) called
'DMP.ARC'. It performs spool to disk and then to printer class
operations. It is also fully capable of spooling to a serial port..
this is the main reason I nabbed it (my printer is some 300 feet
away). Works great.
Pete
--
Pete Lyall Contel Corp.(818)-706-5693
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Internet: pete@wlbr.eaton.com UUCP: {hacgate,jplgodo,voder}!wlbr!pete