Contiki? has one major problem as I check often.? Its hardware specific, and
no sources.? I think it wants a C128 or similar.? Generally the Commieswere?
pretty slick machines but those that could run CP/M were not typical of other
CP/M systems in configuration and features.? Not always bad but standards....
CP/M in general is limited to character serial IO or something that looks like
that.? That's what it knows.? However I'll add that only the OS structure,
the applications running on that base can do literally anything limited
only by code and memory.? Side note to that is graphics standards were
generally hardware specific and not at all portable.
PC modem cards were in two forms dumb (aka win modems) that required
the PC cpu to do most of the lifting for flipping bits and buffering data.? The
earlier and external modems (through the 56K units) were a serial port
interfaced to the bus and a full modem with smarts (usually 6502 based)
and used the same AT protocal to dial/connect/hangup and of couse encoding.
The crappy winmodems (win95 and win98 only) were not at all popular as
it ate CPU and tended to?be flakey.? ?Modems for DOS, NT, WIn2K and
later had to be of the smarter(complete) form as OS was not generally
friendly to drivers like the winmodems used (cpu eaters).
Ethernet boards (and later wifi) were increasingly smarter and designed
to relieve the cpu of workload. Drivers for them were often specific but
the chipsets used were of a limited larger group so many board used
the same drivers.
These days you can get a whole WIFI or Ethernet to serial adaptor. The little board
does most all of the work and you only need to talk at it like a very fast buffered modem.
Allison
