Re: Ada serial Communication packages

["David C. Hoos" <david.c.hoos.sr@ada95.com>]

"Stephen Leake" <Stephe.Leake@nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:uznl4mlpm.fsf@nasa.gov...
> robin-hall@utvinternet.com (AdaNewbie) writes:
>
> > Stephen,
> >
> > Thanks very much for the reply and the low down on licensing issues.
> > Your code is very interesting but based on an OS. I had hope to see a
> > pure Ada implementation,any ideas?
>
> Since the phrase "Serial port" is not in the Ada Reference Manual, it
> is by definition not Pure Ada, so I don't understand what you want :).
>
> To be less pedantic:
>
> Serial ports are hardware; on most computers, the only way to talk to
> hardware is thru an operating system.
>
> Perhaps there is some standard that defines an operating system API
> for serial ports. If that is true, then an Ada binding for that
> standard would be useful, and might be what you are looking for. There
> is an Ada binding to Posix; I don't know if it covers serial ports.

FWIW, the Posix/Ada binding does cover Serial Ports, but it's limited
to 38,400 baud, so hasn't kept up with reality.
Also, it's been several years since I wrote serial port code using the
Posix/Ada bindings, but if I remember correctly, there was some problem
with setting port modes -- e.g., Canoinical, Raw, Cooked, etc.

>
> It would also be possible to treat my Com_Ports Ada spec as a
> standard, and provide a different body for a different operating
> system. So far, I haven't had to do that.
>
> On a hard-core embedded system, with no operating system, a package
> that dealt with serial ports would do direct port IO. That could be
> done with machine-code insertions in Ada; it would be CPU and serial
> port controller chip specific (which is part of the reason operating
> systems were invented :).
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> -- 
> -- Stephe
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