Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!mcdchg!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: need help with xenix Kermit to PC procomm
Message-ID: <6372@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 24 Aug 88 22:48:02 GMT
References: <20302@neabbs.UUCP> <11744@oberon.USC.EDU> <6729@bigtex.uucp> <2877@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> <115@jetson.UPMA.MD.US> <2906@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Reply-To: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 43

In article <2906@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> cck@deneb.ucdavis.edu.UUCP (Earl H. Kinmonth) writes:

>Unfortunately kermit can't hack my current connection at all.  I
>have a 9600 baud leased line from my ATT 6310 running Xenix (or
>MSDOS).  This goes to the UCD data switch (Develecon) which
>connects to a variety of machines through Develnet software
>(Northern Telecom?).  This system USED to work until the Develnet
>software was introduced and the speed of the connection between
>computing center machines was raised to 38400 baud.
>
>Part of the problem may be that kermit on the remote machine sees
>a baud rate of -1 (no provision of 38.4k).  Another problem may
>be that Develnet makes everything mark parity (or at least the
>high bit is always on for incoming data to my machine).
>

You would have to manually set parity to mark (or do so in the 
initialization file).  Kermits do not automatically agree on the
parity setting and will fail if both ends do not match.  You must
also be able to get a start-of-packet character through the connection
(default is CTL-A or SOH). Otherwise everything is forced into
the printable character range.

>Any ideas would be deeply appreciated.

Try turning on the debug and packet logs to see if the SOH is making
it through and the parity is being stripped properly.  It is also
possible that the machine is unable to accept data at 38.4K without
losing characters.  Mux designers tend to have optimistic theories
about incomming data arriving at a typist's speed...

>Also, if kermit does 8-th bit quoting on a need basis it would
>seem that for transfers over 7-bit paths, base-85 coding (25%
>expansion) of binary files should result in faster transmission
>since kermit will always see an ascii input.

This probably would help if you had matching programs at both ends.
Kermit always quotes all control characters except SOH and a 
terminating CR.  If you design something especially for kermit, you
should avoid the # and & characters also since they are used for 
quoting, they must be doubled to act as a normal character.

Les Mikesell