>I'm trying to talk to a PC's serial (COM) port from ACLWIN 3. Has anybody
>managed to achieve this that you know of?  And if so, I'd really like to
>know how...

<- snipp ->

>Regards, Stuart
>
>==========================================
>Stuart Watt
>Lecturer in Knowledge Media and Psychology
>Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes. MK7 6AA.  UK.
>WWW: http://suilven.open.ac.uk/stuart/
>Tel: +44 1908 654513; Fax: +44 1908 653169


This is something I have tried (without full success) before.
The following is a reply from Franz I received for my inquiry (PCSPR3533).

>> Has anyone written a Lisp interface to serial ports for ACL/Win?
>>
>> I haven't given much thought to what the interface should look like. I
would
>> like to use whatever is out there. I'm just getting started with Allegro
CL
>> for Windows version 3.0. I took a look in osidoc.txt and I noticed that
the
>> CreateFile() Win32 API function does not seem to be in there. Is this
just
>> because Franz didn't get around to adding all of the FFIs for the Win32
API?
>
> Thanks for your question.  While a large chunk of the Win32 API is
> available as lisp functions and constants named by symbols in the
> windows package, not all of the the Win32 API were pre-built into the
> lisp.  One can still use ffi, though, to access the remaining API
> routines by using ct:defun-dll.  You have to be aware, though, that
> for certain API such as CreateFile() which take string arguments,
> there is an "Ansi" and a "Wide" version of these functions.  These are
> named in the dlls as CreateFileA() and CreateFileW().  So, to define
> and use the Ansi CreateFile() in aclwin, you'd have to do something
> like the following:
>
> (ct:defun-dll createfile (..arguments..)
>      :entry-name "CreateFileA"
>      :return-type ...
>      :library-name "shell32.dll")
>
> As for the serial ports, one can open a COM port using
>
> (open "com2" :direction :output)
>
> and then use the usual lisp functions for writing to a stream.
>
> Charley
> ---
> Charles A. Cox, Franz Inc.        1995 University Avenue, Suite 275
> Internet: <franz.com at cox>           Berkeley, CA  94704
> WWW: http://www.franz.com/        Phone: (510) 548-3600; FAX: (510)
548-8253

Using the (open "com2" :direction :output) call indeed lets you write to the
strream (and thus to COM2), however you can't use it for input (whether or
not changing :output to :input or :io). I am not aware if Franz fixed this
within 3.01 or 5.0 (though I hope they have).

I have never tried the FFI way suggested by Charles earlier on but maybe
someone else did. I'd like to here more about this.

Best regards,   Henner