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From: carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: VAX TO PHONE LINE, TRANSFERRING FILES
Message-ID: <870728143918.001@CitHex.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Tue, 28-Jul-87 17:43:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: CitHex.870728143918.001
Posted: Tue Jul 28 17:43:52 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 15:32:47 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Distribution: world
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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 > Our communications people will gladly make a direct connection from the 
 > Outdial service to a port on the VAX.  What I need is a program that I can 
 > run that will attach itself to that port, send commands to it, and read the 
 > material coming from it and send it to my terminal and a file.  Since DSIN 
 > and many bulletin boards don't have Kermit like packages, The program has 
 > to be completely self-supporting, no handshaking.
   
This means that there's also no error checking and/or correction in such
cases.

 > Sending stuf to the port is as simple as opening the terminal port, say 
 > TTA0: as a file and writing to it.  Reading what comes back is a different 
 > matter, though.  This is where I am stuck.  How do I know how many reads to 
 > issue?  How can the program know that a carriage return, or a, "a" or 
 > whatever is required in order to continue receiving output.  If the data is 
 > displayed to the screen, I can know that, but then how is the interaction 
 > handeled??

Given that you can't do error checking anyway, you might as well use the
DCL command:
	$ SET HOST/DTE/LOG TTA0:
This lets you deal interactively with whatever's hooked up to TTA0:, and
keeps a log of it.  You end up with wierd record formats, but they can be
fixed fairly easily.