has anyone ever utilized a fossil driver?

[Chuck Guzis]

On 18 Nov 2006 at 19:32, Jay West wrote:

> Eh, not sure that's quite the right way to look at it, but in the final 
> analysis, yes.

I'd like to think that FOSSIL drivers have their roots in the old not-
very-compatible 8-bit Z80/808x world.  Comms implementations were 
about as widely varied as you could get and, stricly speaking, the 
CP/M CBIOS didn't demand a comm port implementation (although some 
vendors included the comm function under PTP/PTR).

So communications programs such as DSZ and Kermit used customizable 
overlays.  Since DLL's didn't exist back then, you filled out your 
overlay, then combined with the generic part of the program and wrote 
a customized executable out.

Cheers,
Chuck