SIO is a serial port driver package for
OS/2 written by
Raymond L. Gwinn. It is designed to not only improve performance over OS/2's default serial drivers, but also improve compatibility. SIO contains a virtualized
FOSSIL
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...
(VX00) driver that can be loaded to provide FOSSIL support to
DOS based communications software. SIO later added the ability to create virtualized COM ports, which, combined with the included program VMODEM, allows incoming
telnet
Telnet is an application protocol used on the Internet or local area network to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is interspersed in-band with Telnet control i ...
connections to be directed toward the virtualized COM port. Older communications software are also able to "call out" to telnet sites. This is possible due to a custom set of "AT" commands that allow users to pass a hostname to the VMODEM software.
.
[
]
SIO (and the included VMODEM software) became very popular among
Bulletin Board System
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...
operators due to the incoming telnet feature, as well as drastic speed improvements over other telnet solutions of the time.
See also
Ray Gwinn's story about the SIO-driver!
References
Device drivers
FOSSIL
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