Release Notes PN 93000160 Digi RealPort Service Version 1.0.20 Windows NTŪ 4.0 Software Package PN 40001738 Software Manual PN 92000290 08/16/2001 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. SUPPORTED PRODUCTS 3. BUG FIXES 4. KNOWN LIMITATIONS 5. INSTALLING MODEM 4EM OR 8EM MODULES 6. PRINTERS 7. HISTORY 1. INTRODUCTION The RealPort service provides Windows NT seamless access to serial ports on Digi PortServer or PortServer II products. The Digi PortServer Product family allows Windows NT users to attach serial devices (modems, terminals, and printers) to the Ethernet based terminal server. Users can use Windows NT RAS, Citrix, dial-out modem pooling applications and terminal server applications such as Point-of-Sale (POS) with the flexibility of terminal server connected devices. The RealPort Service requires the TCP/IP driver to be installed and properly configured. 2. SUPPORTED PRODUCTS PortServer PortServer II PortServer TS Digi One Product Line EtherLite for RealPort Product Line 3. BUG FIXES 4. KNOWN LIMITATIONS RealPort now supports three new flavors of Terminal Servers. Among these the EtherLite Line can support Baud Rates up to 230k and the PortServer TS can support Baud Rates up to 460k on all ports. RealPort was changed to support these new baud rates. Although you can set baud rates up to 460k they will only work on the PortServer TS. Also PortServer and PortServer II are still limited to 115k. PortServer generates receive data errors when running 16 ports full duplex at 57600 BAUD. Changing the baudrate of a serial printer requires deleting the printer device and then re-adding the device with a different baudrate. This is a print manager limitation in Windows NT 4.0. Software flow control characters set to the null (0x00) character for the Xon and Xoff character will be ignored by the driver. The IOCTL_SERIAL_XOFF_COUNTER is not supported. There are some know limitations with Serial Printing. Some Serial printers connected to the RealPort driver via the Digi Terminal Server line may not work properly. 5. INSTALLING MODEM 4EM or 8EM MODULES Windows NT 4.0. Copy mdmdigi.inf from the RealPort installation disk into the %SystemRoot%\inf directory. Then add the modems from Control Panel. 6. PRINTERS Printers using the RealPort driver should be manually started, or the RealPort driver must be started before the printer services. 7. UNINSTALL 1. Run Control Panel | Network 2. Select Services 3. Select the Digi RealPort Service from the Network Services list 4. Choose Remove 7. HISTORY Version 1.0.20 - August 15, 2001 NEW FEATURES If you assign a DNS name to your PortServer TS you can use that name to install / configure your PortServer. (See Local Network Administrator for getting a DNS name assigned ) Added the PortServer TS, Digi ONE, and EtherLite for RealPort support for this release. Version 1.0.8 - Oct 10, 2000 BUG FIXES The RealPort Service will attempt to reestablish its connection to a PortServer when a loss of its TCP/IP connection is detected. This action will occur for any currently open serial ports without user or application interaction. Previously when the TCP/IP connection was lost, any open serial ports would remain in an error state until they were closed and reopened. This fix makes those steps unnecessary. Version 1.0.7 - May 4, 2000 BUG FIXES A close/open race condition has been resolved. The symptoms of this error were exhibited by invalid data returned when using the DOS command MODE, or a printer problem after a system reboot. A transmit latency condition has been resolved. The symptom of this error involves single character data incurring latencies of 120ms. This symptom was only encountered when an application buffered character input, but only issued a single character to the driver. The driver was designed with the assumption that the application would send a buffer of data when available and not parcel the data a character at a time. A fix for serial printers has been added. Version 1.0.3 - August 25, 1998 BUG FIXES Version 1.0.2 - November 7, 1997 BUG FIXES Version 1.0.1 - July 21, 1997 Initial product release.