Hey all!

I have decided to add multiplayer into my FPS game that I am programming for MS-DOS. I wanted to add in a multiplayer feature into the game to add some replayability, but however, I have yet to figure out how to do networking with the Watcom compiler. I have tried converting some Borland C and MSC code from various books that I have read to Watcom, but I have not gotten much success, unfortunately, as the initialization function doesn't even work, and I can not really find out what is going wrong.

Specifically, I was having an issue with inline assembly:

_asm sti

and

_asm cli

apparently do not want to work with Watcom, and I can not figure out for the life of me what the issue could be, so I just commented them out and the program compiled, but it did not work. I am not sure whether this could have caused connectivity issues with the program, but I took them out, or else the program would not compile, which is confusing me even more. Other than that, I did not change any other part of the code.

So, I am going to try and find a (preferably freeware) networking library to help me out. I know several ones for Borland like IBMCOM, but I can not even find it on Google anymore, and even if I could, I am not sure if there would be a Watcom-compatible version.

Watcom C inline assembly syntax is a bit unusual. Place this at the top of the file that has the inline asembly:

#pragma aux cli = "cli";
#pragma aux cli = "sti";

Then just replace every instance of “_asm sti” with “sti();” and every instance of “_asm cli” with “cli();”. More information of inline assembly in Watcom C here.

@a light breeze Thanks, but that did not fix the issue. It still does not want to initialize. Here is the code that I feel is causing issues:

void Serial_Write(char ch)
{

// waits for the transmit buffer to be empty then writes a character to the transmit 
//buffer. Not interrupt driven.


while(!(inp(open_port + SERIAL_LSR) & 0x20)){}

// turn off interrupts 

cli();

// send the character

outp(open_port + SERIAL_THR, ch);

// turn interrupts on

sti();

} // end Serial_Write

@hplus0603 I suppose so… I am not sure how to check. I dont think watcom supports that. But I have gotten the code to work with Borland, but I dont want to convert all my code back to 16 bit.

@hplus0603 Also, I tried SoftICE and I can not figure out how to use it, and it didnt go well with my VMware Windows 95 machine, so are there any other options?

@hplus0603 Do you know how to get into protected mode in the code? Is there any way I could temporarily do that?

@undefined Or is there a way I could use the port in protected mode? What would the address be?

@hplus0603 And I can figure out the time out stuff… I just need it to connect first. Besides, I already have some functions for time outs that are in the sendInformation function, which is where the code I posted above works its "magic".