On 16-May-99 20:45:22 BST, Emilio Desalvo wrote:
>>> Bearing in mind what Tim found -- that it works with low-end equipment
>>> after all, do you think the stuff about the Pace Solo being too fast
>>> might be incorrect?
>> No, as I received it in this mailing list from Chris Wiles or another
>> representative of Active Technologies.
>
> Here it is:
> Il 29-Dic-98, Chris Wiles scrisse:
>
>>> Do you mean that whenever you use the Solo in independent mode and
>>> receive a fax, when you download it to the Amiga with STFax you get it
>>>striped and squashed?
>> Oh, pleeeease. Get it right :)
>> With the *Amiga* you get striped faxes, this is due to the slowness of
>> the fastest Amiga cpu. ie. even the 060 cannot decode the information,
>> on the fly, fast enough to cope with the incoming data. Maybe we can get
>> around this with PPC support (not easy) and faster serial ports. The
>> problem is that the Solo was created and tested with a slow Pentium in
>> mind (ie. a 'slow' 200MMX) as the testing machine. Even a
>> 200MMX is a *LOT* faster than the 060).
That may sound convincing, but as a programmer, I don't think the comments
above quite tell the full story. Basically, there's more than one way
to program something - I believe that if a different approach was used,
the problem would be erradicated.
For example, ok, so maybe the 060 can't decode the fax data quickly enough
on the fly (i.e. so data is lost at the serial interface). But, it does
not /need/ to be decoded on the fly, although it's probably the neatest
and most logical approach. That's no good if it doesn't work properly. It
may be better to download the data from the Solo, saving it to a temporary
file or memory buffer, and then decode it afterwards, thus minimizing CPU
usage during the serial transfer (this is possible because STFax knows how
long the fax data is going to be before it starts downloading it).
It's wrong to blame the Solo - in this case, all it does is dump the
fax data down the serial cable. The software chooses the speed at
which this transfer should take place, be it 115200 or 9600 bps! The
point being is that if you have a fast third-party serial port, this
shouldn't matter anyway. Put simply, it's up to the software to make
sure it receives all the data.
--
Oliver Roberts /~\ ___(~)__ __ |~~~/~| UIN: 34640231
Norwich, UK | o | ' |~/. /. | | ~|| | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|_|_|_M_|_\_,\__; |_| |_| [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Amiga Developer |__/ http://www.nanunanu.org/~oliver/
Pace 56 Solo mailing list ==> http://www.egroups.com/group/56solo/
--
STFax Mailing List - http://www.active-net.co.uk/products/stfax
ML-Help: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "HELP" or "LONGINDEX"
ML-Unsubscribe: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "DEL" in mail body
