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- 12/15/83 - Revised to reflect operation with initial packet timeout.
-
-
- KERMIT ON MTS
-
- Written in Pascal/VS by
-
- William S. Hall
- Mathematical Reviews
- 611 Church Street
- Ann Arbor, MI
- 313-763-6831
-
-
- Kermit is a file transfer program allowing movement of files
- among a variety of computer systems including micro-mainframe and
- mainframe-mainframe. The following note describes how to use the
- program SJ1K:Kermit.exe on the Michigan Terminal System (MTS).
- It is assumed that the user already has a version of Kermit
- running on his or her computer and is familiar with its operation.
- To obtain copies of Kermit for various micros, UNIX, TOPS-10,
- and TOPS-20 operating systems as well as detailed documentation,
- contact the author or
-
- Kermit Distribution
- Columbia University Center for Computing Activities
- 7th Floor, Watson Laboratory
- 612 West 115th Street
- New York, NY 10025
-
- The source code for Kermit on MTS is in the file
- SJ1K:Kermit.pas. It is permitted to all to read. It is known to
- work against DEC-20's running TOPS-20 (the definitive test),
- Zenith Z100's running CP/M-85, and Heath H8/89's running CP/M. At
- present it will not work the Z100 under ZDOS and thus its
- performance with the IBM PC is doubtful. It is most likely due
- to a bug in PCKERMIT, which should be fixed soon.
-
- Running Kermit
-
- To transfer text files between MTS and your system proceed as
- follows:
-
- (1) Run Kermit on your controlling micro or mainframe.
-
- (2) Set the IBM flag ON and then set local-echo OFF.
-
- (3) Log onto MTS as usual.
-
- (4) To initiate a file transfer run SJ1K:KERMIT.EXE.
-
- (5) Respond to command prompts by entering 'R' (or 'r') to
- have MTS receive a file. Answer 'Y' if you want
- MTS to reserve the first character in each line of
- your file for carriage control (see below). Exit to
- controlling system and send file.
-
- (6) Respond with 'S' (or 's') to send a list of files.
- Answer 'Y' if ALL files to be sent from MTS use
- column 1 for carriage control (see below). Enter
- file names one at a time when prompted. Terminate
- list with a carriage return. Exit to controlling
- system and prepare to receive a file. In about 5
- seconds, MTS Kermit will attempt to handshake with
- your machine. If you miss the first packet and
- your version of Kermit does not have time-outs
- (most micro versions do not), trigger MTS with two
- carriage returns from your machine.
-
- Current Limitations:
-
- (1) Only text files can be transferred.
-
- (2) File names should be less than 40 characters and
- have no device names when sent from MTS. TEST.PAS
- is OK, but SJ1K:TEST.PAS is not.
-
- (3) MTS Kermit has no timeout, hence deadlocks can
- occur. If the process seems to stop, try a carriage
- return or two to break the deadlock. Use several of
- them to exit the file transfer mode, and connect
- back to MTS. If the MTS Kermit is still running, you
- will have to kill the program with "ATTN" (control-E).
- To restore normal terminal operation enter the command
- "%reset".
-
- (4) Pascal/VS does not at present allow a run-time error
- to be intercepted by the program. Such errors can
- occur if files to be sent are not present or if disk
- space is exceeded. Hence the transfer will stop,
- and the resulting deadlock must be broken as
- described above.
-
- (5) If a horizontal tab is encountered when a file is
- being received, it is expanded to spaces for the
- usual tab stops of 1, 9, 17, 25, 33, etc. before
- being written to an MTS file. Spaces are not
- compressed to tabs during transmission from MTS.
-
- (6) The carriage control option allows the user to
- reserve column 1 in an MTS file for printer carriage
- control. Otherwise, column 1 in the file is regarded
- as data. See also the next item.
-
- (7) If an ASCII form feed is encountered in a file begin
- received, the Pascal/VS "page" call is made. This
- has the effect of placing a '1' in column 1 of the
- MTS file. Thus, files with form feeds should choose
- the carriage control option 'Y' described above.
- Conversely, if the MTS file has a '1' in column 1 it
- is converted to a form feed when being sent if a 'Y'
- is given to the carriage control prompt. Best
- results are obtained if the form feed is on its own
- line in the file to be sent to MTS.
-
- (8) Other control characters are handled by simply
- substituting the corresponding EBCDIC control
- character.
-