SERFIXUP is intended to work with the DOOM v1.2 SERSETUP.EXE.  It increases
the baud rate of your serial port from DOOM's 9600 to 14,400, resulting in
better performance in a multiplayer game.

SERSETUP doesn't perform miracles.  If your CPU is already stressed from
running DOOM's intensive graphics while being interrupted at 9600 baud, no
benefit will be seen from SERFIXUP.  You might even lose incoming data if the
serial port can't be serviced in a timely manner.

On the other hand, if you have a fast CPU with lots of memory and a 16550
UART, it's likely that the serial port traffic is the bottleneck in your
multiplayer game.  In this case SERFIXUP can help by boosting the transfer of
serial data by 50%.

(I imagine that Id restricted the baud rate to 9600 to avoid the complaints
from users with marginal hardware.  As I'm not asking any money for my
software, I don't care if people complain or not.)

DEFICIENCIES
------------
As SERFIXUP was written for my own use, it's not "user friendly" and lacks
flexibility.  Restrictions on use:

   0. Only supports COM1 and COM2 at the standard base I/O addresses.
   1. No validity checking is done, so don't specify a non-existent port.
   2. Baud rate specification of 14400 is hard-coded (for now).

USING SERFIXUP
--------------
SERFIXUP doesn't alter any of DOOM's files, or any data files created by
DOOM.  It also doesn't take an command line parameters.  The number of the
serial port to program is passed from SERSETUP to SERFIXUP.

First, ensure that you can run ok with DOOM's SERSETUP.  When you're sure
that your connection is error-free (modem settings are accurate, etc.) you
can attempt to improve performance be running SERFIXUP *immediately* prior
to running DOOM's SERSETUP.  The following example might be seen in a batch
file:

        @echo off
        serfixup
        sersetup -COM2

How do you know if the performance is improved?  Just by perception.  The
goal of SETFIXUP is to improve performance of multiplayer DOOM by improving
the rate at which serial data is transmitted between players.  If the play
doesn't seem smoother, then there's no point in running SERFIXUP.


                                                Steve Snyder
                                                CIS ID: 76447,3264