                             OS/tools Incorporated
           COMi Multi-port Asynchronous Serial Device Driver
                              Product Description

Overview
  COMi is a multi-port asynchronous serial device driver for OS/2.  It allows
  access to up to 99 serial devices in any OS/2 machine.  COMi supports
  shared interrupts on Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) machines when
  used with specific serial adapters, and on Micro Channel Architecture (MCA)
  machines with any serial adapter.  In addition, COMi has support for
  COMscope built-in.  COMi is designed to conform exactly to the description
  for Asynchronous Serial device drivers in the "Physical Device Driver''
  technical reference.

COMi Advanced Features
     + Up to eight devices on a single hardware interrupt are supported.
     + Allows user to specify all device driver buffer sizes.
     + DOS device names from COM1 through COM99 are supported.
     + Tests each device at initialization.
     + Supports baud rates of 115.2k and above.
     + Lets user specify the start-up states of all protocol parameters.
     + Enables applications to control all modem control register control
       signals.
     + Includes extensions for COMscope access.

Device Tests at Initialization
  COMi tests that each device defined by the user is connected to the
  interrupt specified, and insures that any user specified interrupt ID
  register works as it should.  Before the device driver tries to access any
  user defined devices, it first tries to determine the specified device is a
  UART.  When it a device fails any test that device will not be available at
  run-time.  Full diagnostic messages are displayed during initialization of
  the device driver by the operating system.

Hardware Interrupt Sharing
  MCA machines have level sensitive interrupts and, therefore, are designed
  to allow hardware interrupts to be shared.  ISA machines have edge
  sensitive interrupts and normally prohibit interrupt sharing.  COMi
  supports shared interrupt schemes found on four different manufacturer's
  ISA serial adapters.  Four and eight port boards from Sealevel Systems,
  DigiBoard, Comtrol, and Quatech are supported. COMi can support up to eight
  devices on a single hardware interrupt level using adapter boards from these
  manufacturers.

Custom Buffer Sizing
  The user can specify sizes for any of the device driver's buffers.  Each
  device can be configured to have up to 8k byte receive, transmit, and
  COMscope buffers.

Extended  Modem Controls
  COMi can be configured to allow applications to control the OUT1 and LOOP
  bits in the modem control register.  In addition,  OUT1 can be made to
  initialize, and remain, in the active state throughout an OS/2 session.


DOS Device Name Flexibility.
  The user can specify any COMx name for any device from COM1 through COM99.
  Any device can have any unique DOS COMx device name.

Baud Rate Selectivity
  Some adapter boards allow the user to select a non-standard baud rate
  clock. COMi can be configured to allow an application to send an explicit
  baud rate divisor to be written directly into the baud rate registers.

Protocol Defaults
  All application definable parameters can be set to user specified defaults.
  The user can specify the start-up baud rate, handshaking scheme (Xon/Xoff,
  CTS, RTS, DTR, etc.), UART FIFO function, read/write time-out values and
  processing, and stream filtering.

COMscope Support Extensions
  COMi has extensions that allows COMscope to monitor and control a port.
  COMi will return the "COM Event'' word and the "COM Error'' word to
  COMscope without clearing those variables at the device driver.

The Future of COMi
  COMi development has been continuous for the last five years.  Its
  evolution has been driven by both by our in-house needs and customer needs
  and suggestions.  We intend to continue this evolution as we identify new
  features to add to COMi to satisfy our needs and the needs of our
  customers.  Thank you for your interest.  We hope you will find COMi to be
  as useful as we have.

COMi, COMscope, and OS/tools are trademarks of OS/tools Incorporated.

OS/2 is a trademark of International Business Machines, Incoroporated.
