World of Ham Radio 1997/WOHR97_AmSoft_(1997-02-01).iso/rtty/rtty_04/amsoft.iii

Text File | 1997-02-01 | 12KB | 182 lines

                    THIS PROGRAM IS GIVEN UNTO THE PUBLIC
                    THIS DAY 28 OF AUGUST, 1985.  (K2TA)

                        -DOCUMENTATION FOR K2TATERM-
                          An Amateur Radio Program

This program controls most of the operation of the AEA AMT-1 AMTOR terminal
unit.  It should also work with the other makes of the AMT-1.  The program
signs on with some totally gratuitous windowing.  The sign-on message appears
in the last window and prompts the user to hit return.  The request for any
kind of response is made to allow for improvement of the program as well as
getting some idea how many people got a chance to try it.  The station owner's
callsign, selcal, name and QTH, as well as the text colors, are kept in a
file called "INFOINFO.TXT".  The first time the program runs, it will not find
this file and will prompt you for the necessary information.  Thereafter, you
will not need to enter the information again unless you want to change the
colors of the text on the screen or your selcal.  You may then press "F1" to
see the menu.  K2TATERM was primarily designed for flexibility in the ARQ
AMTOR mode but works well in all modes.

 Pressing "Alt-F3" will put the AMT-1 into the AMTOR FEC (mode B) receive.
You may enter the other station's callsign by pressing "Alt-F8". When the
F10 key is pressed (ID), this callsign followed by "DE" and your own callsign
will be sent over the air. A character will appear in the transmit text wind-
ow (bottom 4 lines of screen) that says ID.  Switching between FEC transmit
and receive is done by pressing F8 for transmit, F7 for receive.

    Pressing "Alt-F2" will cause the AMT-1 to commence calling a station if
a call/selcal is already entered.  If not, you will be prompted for the other
stations callsign and selcal.  When the 4 letter selcal is entered (by hitting
the return key), the AMT-1 will call the station using that selcal.
The other station's selcal and callsign are displayed on the right hand side
of the status display.  Right after the calling is started, the transmit
buffer in the AMT-1 contain the message of "(hiscall) de (yourcall) (name)
in (QTH).  If the link is made, the text is sent and you may press CR and/or
F9(OVER+?) to switch to the ARQ receive mode. At this time, it is probably a
good idea to press the F2 key. This will prompt you for the band or frequency
you are using and the RST of the station you are calling.  It will then store
the entire logging information including mode, time, date, call and sig report
to the disk.

  The signal report string may be up to 20 characters in length. This allows
both reports to be entered if needed or a contest type 599001 NNJ type report.

  No protection is provided for entry of more than 20 characters.  For the
most part, the sig report will just be one or 2 RST's.  If you want to push
for more, be warned that you can write over some of the program variables if
you insist on large signal reports.  This is not a contest logging/dupe check
program just an simple logging routine in a terminal program.

  The program then returns to the receive mode, if you have pressed the F9,+?
key or the transmit mode if you have not.

  Pressing the F5 button will initiate a save to disk routine.  You will be
prompted to enter a file name.  The default file,"RECEIVED.TXT", can be
selected just by hitting the return key.  Otherwise, type the filename of the
file you want to save all received text in.  You are then asked if you want
to delete the old file. If you type "Y", the new saved file will contain only
what new text has been received since hitting return. If you answer "N", then
all new text will be appended to the text in the previous file.  The file
will collect all text sent between both stations until the "HOME" key is
pressed to return to the PC-DOS operating system.  This can be done at the end
of a qso and the file may be edited and/or renamed for re-transmission or
whatever.  A reminder to always type in the UPPER CASE LOCKED mode. Lower case
Y's will be interpreted as a NO response.  Yes, that could have been corrected
in my input routine, but typing in CAPS LOCK is not a real problem to begin
with. (I am a very lazy individual doing something that sometimes seems like
work, no other excuses for my poor programming practices will be given.)

  You may transmit a file by pressing F6. You will be prompted for a file name
which you may type in, or you may select the default file "TRANSMIT.TXT" by
hitting return.  The file will then be transmitted and visible in the transmit
window before being echoed by the AMT-1 to the receive window.  The text will
be sent until the end of the file or until you press a key. Pressing a key
will abort the transmission and empty the transmit buffer in the AMT-1. This
is nice if you are sending a long long picture and have to qrt or otherwise
abort the transmission.

  All text may be saved at any time to the printer by pressing the F3 key.

Note: You may start and stop the printer at any time by toggling the printer
by pressing the F3 key again.  This differs from the receive file, which once
selected will continue saving text until exiting to the operating system.
  Actually, if the receive file is open, and you press F5 to receive a file,
the first file is closed (saved). You may then enter a different filename to
save the next text to without leaving the program.  This allows a different
file for each QSO if you wish, but remember you are always saving to some
disk file once you have started saving to any.

  Dropping the link in ARQ mode is done by pressing the F7 button to go to
FEC receive mode. If you were in FEC, you will go to receive mode. If you
were in ARQ then the message "BREAKING LINK NOW 73" is sent just prior to
the dropping of the link and returning to the FEC mode.

Call CQ by pressing F10. It sends CQ CQ CQ de (yourcall)(name)in(QTH)(SELCAL)

Interrupt a station (BREAK Cntrl-C) by pressing Alt-F9. Not nice to do a lot.

If the received text looks like *&$%%#@$# 3@@# 3$%^& 5&^ *&^, then press the
DEL key on the right hand side of the keyboard. This forces the AMT-1 back
from the numbers shift to the letters shift.

If you miss a line feed on receive, and text is writing over what is already
there, press INS key (next to the DEL). This will insert a linefeed into the
text both on the screen and to the disk/printer.

All normal AMT-1 commands are still executable from the keyboard. The only
difference being that the keyboard is buffered and looks for a space or
carriage return before sending text out to the AMT-1.  This allows for typing
corrections within words. So if you want to send an ESC A to the AMT-1 by hand
then be sure to follow it by a CR or Space.  You should rarely have a need to
send a manual command to the AMT-1. At least I hope not, this program is
supposed to do that for you.

The receive routine is interrupt driven and a 4,096 byte buffer is used in
addition to the one in the AMT-1.  However, the transmit routine waits until
the port has sent a character before you can type another.
  As it stands, you have a word buffer and the 16 character keyboard buffer,
but you will not see what you are typing once you enter the IBM keyboard
buffer.  I use this program whenever I operate and I'll be the first to admit,
the best improvement for smooth operation would be a nice buffered interrupt
driven keyboard input routine.  When I get one I will install it in this
program and release it as soon as it gets checked out.
   This program will work in a limited way with other terminal units but the
functions keys will probably not work.  Cntrl and Escape sequences may be
entered manually from the keyboard.

In the mean time, the K2TATERM provides useful terminal functions as well as
simple auto-logging and file transfer.  Any questions, complaints, thanks or
what-have-you may be sent directly to me at:
                                              Tom Althoff K2TA
                                              P.O. Box K-43
                                              Greenwood Lake, N.Y.
                                              10925 U.S.A.

   The program was written in C and 8088 assembler and includes the
windows4c library, a public domain program from Boyd.
    I truely hope many of you will find this program useful enough
that you actually use and enjoy it in good health! 73's. Tom K2TA.


Additional things you might like to know......
1)After an ARQ qso with F7, the other stations callsign and selcal is cleared.
2)Any manual commands you send out must be followed by a space or C/R in order
  to clear the transmit word buffer.(reminder)
3)In transmit from disk mode, the text will be echoed to the bottom of the
  screen right away.  However, any automatic text transmission such as the
  CQ, ID, LOG(transmits the date and time over the air as it logs to disk),
  and signoff, will not echo until they are echoed back from the AMT-1. This
  just means you will wait a couple of seconds after hitting a key for the
  text to be sent. Actually, it is sent right away if you look at the traffic
  light on the AMT-1, it just takes a second to fill the AMT-1's internal
  buffer and then echo back to the receive screen.
4)If you select a file to receive that does not exist, you will get a file not
  found message.  You must answer Y to the question delete old file. This will
  create a new file for receive under the new name.
5)I wrote this quickly (about a week and a half on my spare time). There could
  (should) be better error trapping. For instance, there is no checking for
  disk space. I use the 10 meg hard disk but I realize there are a lot of
  floppy systems out there.  All I can suggest is that the disk containing the
  K2TATERM program only contains files pertaining to operating the AMT-1. This
  includes brag files etc. There should be no problem with files of average or
  even long length.  I have not prevented the possibility of filling the disk
  up with files and trying to write more. In fact, I'm not sure how the system
  would respond.
6)Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, you get what you pay for, let the
  buyer beware, are all sayings that come to mind when attempting to use
  public domain software. Keep in mind, my C library contains many public
  domain programs that have not been truely field tested.  There is an error
  in the scrolling routine of WINDOWS4C.LIB but is cosmetic and I worked
  around it in my program.  Just be aware that bugs are always a possibility
  and treat the program as an experiment in AMTOR/RTTY. Don't be afraid to try
  something different to get something to work. Don't be angry with the guy
  you got the software from (gulp!...me).  I don't pretend to be a professional
  programmer. However, dispite the warnings, I do use this program daily and
  have long since adapted to any idiosyncracies of the program and actually
  handle QSO's with very little confusion now that I got to know which function
  keys did what and didn't have to keep using the help command screen.

Again..good luck. If you use this program with the AMT-2 or any other T.U.
than the AMT-1, please let me know what happens. I'm curios if the AMT-2
commands are downward compatible with the AMT-1. Thanks. Tom K2TA 9/1/85.