PicLan Version 2.0.0.1 Release Announcement
(C) Copyright 1990-1996 Modular Software Corporation. All rights reserved.
For more information about PicLan contact: sales@modsoft.com
or visit http://modsoft.com
PicLan Version 2.0.0.1 will be available soon
August 25, 1996
PicLan version 2.0.0.1 is currently being released for all platforms.
This document discusses the elements that this release addresses. This
release is considered a minor upgrade.
New Features
The following new feature have been added to version 2.0.0.1:
PCI Driver Load
The PL-LOAD program will display the PCI chip type, IRQ, and I/O base address
during load. This can make debugging PCI conflict problems easier.
New DSG Function
A function for DOS file rename is being added to PLSUB.DSG and to the PL-TERM,
PL-DSG, and PL-DSGW programs.
Code Changes
Numerour internal code cleanups are being included in this build. These
changes were not intended to fix any specific bugs, but instead were intended
to reduce code size and cleanup code re-use between platforms.
VB SDK Integration
The VB SDK toolkit version 2.0 is now used to build PLTW.EXE and PLTW32.EXE.
PLTW32.EXE Overhead Tuning
The background processing scheduling for PLTW32 has been enhanced. It was
noted that PLTW32 would cause an NT 3.51 system to run somewhat slowly
if there were more than 3 copies running (on a Pentium 90 with 32 Meg).
The new release is more definative about giving up time when not busy and
should allow more instances without system degredation.
Bug Fixes
The following bugs are fixed in version 2.0.0.1:
PLTW.EXE / PLTW32.EXE
Minimizing and maximizing the windows will no longer produce a VB run-time
error.
PLTW32.EXE
The type mismatch VB run-time error during startup has been fixed.
PCI Driver
Additional testing in-house revealed that the PCI adapters have been programmed
in "promiscuous" mode. This did not directly effect PicLan, as it checks
addresses carefully, but placing the Pick host on a busy segment would
result in unnecessary overhead within the PicLan driver.
PL-CFG.INI File Locating
A bug in the code used to locate the PL-CFG.INI file has been fixed. This
now allows you to set an environment variable to specify a particular INI
file.
DOS Install Fix
The DOS INSTALL.EXE program has been fixed to correctly scan all disks
for installation files.
Soft Ethernet Frame Type Restructuring
The internal logic to support soft frame types has been modified to work
better on networks that do have routers. If your network has an Ethernet
router, the soft frame type logic will give preference to the native frame
type of the local end of the connection when scanning for PicLan servers.
If the other end of a connection is available both over a router and via
a single direct hop using a soft frame type, then the single direct hop
will be chosen.