BOBTERM 1.21 REVIEW¢-------------------¢¢ by Joel Kennedy (Reprinted from the Puget Sound Atari News, September 1990)¢¢ Well guess what the friendly UPS man had for me on August 9th? Yep, SpartaDOS X and the R-Time 8 cart from ICD! SDX is great! I love it!!! The R-Time 8 is just as good (never again will I set the clock! right? Well, almost. The cart was sitting on top of my XE and fell a whole 2 1/2 inches. I now have a piece of foam stuffed inside the R-Time 8 to keep the battery in contact. Don't set the cart on top of your computer!).¢¢ Ok, stop laughing and read about BobTerm 1.21 from Bob Puff. When you first boot up BobTerm (to be refered to throughout this article as BT) you see a well done title screen. What I find most impressive about it is its rather accurate depiction of the states. Good job, Bob! Next, you see the Main Menu. The options are pretty self explanatory, but I thought I would mention a few of them in more depth.¢¢ A -- You can change between ASCII, ATARI (aka ATASCII), VT-52E, and VT-52O. VT-52 is a terminal emulator, the 'E' and 'O' denoting even and odd parity respectively.¢¢ B -- Baud rates go clear up to 19.2k!!¢¢ D -- Well, it seems self explanatory but Bob added an embellishment. If you press START while you press 'D' you will be switched into "echoplex." This is primarily used when modeming between two individuals. One sets 'echoplex' on and the other stays in full duplex. Normally both would have to switch to half duplex, but echoplex will echo back the characters - just like a BBS.¢¢ F&G -- For when you are talking to someone (voice) and want to go to the computer mode (data) without redialing. Very handy!¢¢ R&S -- You can set both the transfer protocol, as well as the drive and path, for uploads and downloads. For Downloads BT automatically adjusts to the senders protocol. Also, for both uploads and downloads BT eliminates the need to pad a transfer block by switching to smaller blocks, and therefore lower protocols, if the rest of a file won't fit in the size block in use. For example: You are transferring a file that is 2, 176 bytes long. You select 1k x-modem and two complete blocks of 1k are transfered. BT will then switch to standard x-modem for the remaining 128 bytes of data.¢¢ K -- basically a standard menu of DOS 2.x/MYDOS commands. If you'd loaded the CP.BTM (as a module), it will give you an interface directly into Sparta's command processor. The lower menu commands are mainly used when you are in the Term mode. You can activate word wrap, reset the online time clock, switch between realtime/online time, do a screen dump, save a snapshot of the screen to the buffer and even activate fine scrolling. The chat window is an interesting feature, it allows you to pre-edit what you type before you send it. It only has a three line capacity but it is still handy. I don't use it much anymore because of the delay it causes. Everything that's in the buffer is sent when you press RETURN. Most people don't like you using it because they can't tell if you are typing something or just sitting there 'twiddlin your thumbs.'¢¢ When "J" is selected from the Main Menu three options will replace the lower menu. This submenu is pretty straight forward. By selecting the first option you will be able to see what the system macros have been set to. You can change your screen colors here as well as alter the macros. By choosing the third option the BOBTERM.CNF file will be written. This saves things other than just the macros and screen colors - so make sure you have everything set the way you want it.¢¢ Selecting "E" from the Main Menu will put you in the Autodialer Menu. The options are clear. Something of note though to you people with 'call waiting'. You can use the long distance code feature to disable your call waiting. See the docs for the 'how to.' As I mentioned under the 'DOS functions' selection you can activate modules wich will add different features to BT. This are external modules which are loaded at bootup. Two are included, these are CP.BTM and XEP80.BTM. As I already said, CP.BTM gives you an interface to Sparta. XEP80.BTM is the driver for the XEP80 80 column card from Atari. I don't have this as yet, so I can't say how well it works, though I have been told that the one included in the version 1.20 arc file is buggy so make sure you get 1.21. Well that's all fine and well on how to use it, but what does it feel like to use it? Well, I like BobTerm 1.21! I have only one complaint - you abort an operation by pressing START and begin one by pressing SELECT. This seems reverse to me. Otherwise, to quote Dan Knauf from his 'Black Box vs. MIO' article, "pretty is as pretty does." BT is very nice and user friendly (except for the use of the START key). I've used it for the past couple of months and the only time I had any problems was when the handler wouldn't load from my 850 (I have to shut EVERYTHING off and try again if this happens, not just the 850 and the computer. If I even leave the disk drive on it won't work. Is there something wrong with my 850? If you know please tell me.) or when I attempted certain operations from the command line interface to Sparta. Outside from the above mentioned things I have had no problems whatsoever with BT and enjoy it very much.¢¢¢This article was taken from the newsnet system, and transferred by Mike Blenkiron, and tidied by dean Garraghty.¢
