                            OS/tools Incorporated
      COMscope Serial Communications Monitor and Controller
                             Product Description

Overview
  COMscope is a Presentation Manager program that allows monitoring and control
  of OS/2 COM devices, without interfering with any application accessing any
  device being monitored.  COMscope can take the place of a stand alone
  protocol analyzer to aid in troubleshooting communications sessions and to
  help debug communications applications.  COMscope takes advantage of
  extensions to the COMi device driver to allow a user to have complete control
  of communications devices and processes on their OS/2 machines.

COMscope Device Monitoring and Display Capabilities:
  +  Traces the serial stream as written to, and read from, the hardware, by
     any communications application accessing the port.  There are two
     display modes: Lexical and Time-relational.
  +  Displays device driver transmit and receive buffer utilization by
     showing the number of characters currently in a buffer and the ratio of
     content to size (in percent).
  +  All modem input signal states; CTS, DTR, CD, and RI.
  +  Modem output signal states; RTS and DTR, as set by an application, the
     COMi device driver, and/or COMscope.
  + The "COM Event'' word, as seen by an application.  The "COM Event''
     word is normally cleared whenever an application reads its contents.
     COMscope gives you the choice of either clearing the device driver
     variable or leaving it for an application to read and clear.
  +  The "COM Error'' word, as seen by an application.  As with the 
      "COM Event'' word, the user can choose to clear, or not clear, this
      device  driver variable, as a query by an application would.
  +  The "COM status'' byte, as seen by an application.
  +  The ``Transmit Status'' byte, as seen by an application.
  +  The current device setup, as selected by an application accessing a
     device, or by COMscope.

COMscope Device Control Capabilities:
  +  Can set all device driver parameters an application is able to set;
     including baud rate, line characteristics, read/write time-out
     processing, handshaking, stream filters, and FIFO function.
  +  Can cause the receive and/or transmit device driver buffers to be
     flushed.
  +  Is able to place the UART into the break state, and return it to normal.
  +  Can force the defined Xoff or Xon characters to be transmitted on
     command.
  +  Is able to force the device driver to act like an Xoff, or Xon, has been
     received.
  +  Will transmit any keystroke, or bit pattern as requested.
  +  Is able to change the state of the OUT1 modem control register signal.
  +  Controls all of the UART's output and diagnostic signals; including DSR,
     RTS, OUT1, and LOOP.

Serial Stream Trace Details
  COMscope will capture and/or display the entire data stream for the device it
  is monitoring.  The captured data can be written to disk for later review and
  processing.  Up to one million characters can be saved and reviewed in RAM.
  The buffer trace can be set to either wrap around for a continuous trace, to
  stop capturing when the buffer is completely filled, or write the buffer to
  one of a series of files on disk each time the buffer becomes full.

  The trace data can be displayed as either ASCII characters or as eight bit
  Hexadecimal numbers.  The receive and transmit streams can be displayed
  either lexically, in two vertical columns, or time-relationally in
  alternating rows.  Foreground and background colors for each display panel
  are user selectable.

  In the time-relational mode the display can be set to highlight any
  transmitted and/or received Xon/Xoff characters when Xon/Xoff handshaking has
  been enabled in the device driver.  The stream can be displayed compressed or
  expanded.

  In the lexical mode the user can select various filters and processing
  options including: column synchronization, "new-line'' character detection,
  line wrap, character bit mask, and character type filters.

Device Driver State Monitoring Details
  Communications applications can query the device driver to determine the
  state of the device and device driver it is accessing.  The application can
  use the information received to make decisions for its own processing.

  Applications can get information on the number of characters in the receive
  buffer and the number of characters in the transmit buffer.  In addition, the
  functions that return the number of characters in the buffers, also return
  the actual size of the buffer.  COMscope can display the count of characters
  in a buffer and the ratio of character count to size for each buffer.

  An application can request information on errors detected by the UART and
  device driver (COM Errors).  The errors reported include framing, parity,
  hardware overrun, and device driver buffer overrun.  COMscope displays the
  current states of this error information and gives the user the ability to
  clear the field stored in the device driver instead of leaving it for an
  application to read and clear.
 
  Communications processes can request information about various events
  detected, and actions taken by the device driver and hardware.  All of the
  information an application can access is available to the user in small
  movable windows that can be placed anywhere on the screen.  Each of the four
  fields, COM Event, COM Error, Transmit Status, and COM Status are represented
  as hexadecimal numbers.  The user can easily get an explanation of what each
  bit in each field represents by selecting that field.

  Normally the COM Event and COM Error words are cleared by the device driver
  whenever an application requests them.  COMscope will clear either of these
  two fields only at the users request.

  Applications can query the device driver for the current input and output
  modem signals.  The states of these signals are also made available to the
  COMscope user.

  The refresh rate for these monitored variables is adjustable.

Device Driver Control Function Details
  Any device or device driver parameter an application can affect, can also be
  controlled by COMscope.  A COMscope operator may change the baud rate,
  protocol, read/write time-out processing, or any other function or operating
  parameter of a device, without an application being aware of the changes.

  An application can flush the receive and transmit device driver buffers; as
  can COMscope.

  Applications and COMscope can force the device driver to enter or exit the
  transmit Xon or transmit Xoff state. When transmit Xon/Xoff processing is
  enabled the device driver will stop transmitting when it receives the Xoff
  character and begin transmitting again only after receiving the Xon
  character.  When an application detects that transmitting has stopped because
  an Xoff character has been received (by querying the Transmit Status byte),
  it can force the device driver to begin transmitting again, without further
  waiting for an Xon character to be received. An application can also force
  the device driver to act like an Xoff has been received, causing the device
  driver to stop transmitting until an Xon character is received.

  COMscope can transmit an Xon or Xoff on command, forcing the "far-end'' to
  begin transmitting data again after it has stopped transmitting because it
  has received an Xoff from the "near-end'' (this device driver), or stop
  transmitting (assuming Xon/Xoff handshaking is enabled).  COMscope can
  transmit any single byte value, put the UART in the break state, and take it
  out of the break state, and can enable or disable the OUT1 modem control
  register signal.

COMscope to Configure the COMi Device Driver
 
  The COMi device driver can be configured to start-up in any state the user
  requires.  All of the protocol parameter defaults (baud rate, line
  characteristics, handshaking, and stream filtering), 16550 UART FIFO
  processing defaults, receive and transmit time-out processing defaults,
  receive and transmit buffer sizes, extended modem control processing, the DOS
  device name (COMx),  and other operating parameters for the device driver are
  programmable by COMscope.

  COMscope can be used to query the device driver and initialization files for
  all device driver run-time variables, as well as all of the device driver
  default (start-up) variables.  With COMscope you can specify any DOS device
  name for each port from COM1 through COM99.

  COMscope also makes it easy to set up COMi for ISA systems that are using
  specific adapters that allow interrupt sharing.  The user simply selects the
  type (brand/model) and fills any required fields that are required by the
  adapter they are using, and COMscope does the rest.

The Future of COMscope
  We have developed COMscope over the last four years.  It started as a simple
  program to help us, and our beta customers, debug the first versions of our
  COMi serial device driver.  COMscope has been evolving continuously as our
  customer base has expanded and eventually matured into the current product.
  We expect to continue this evolution as we apply the many suggestions our
  customers have passed along to us.  Thank you for your interest,  We hope you
  will find COMscope 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.
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