Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!serene!rfarris
From: rfarris@serene.UUCP (Rick Farris)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Remote control of PC via modem
Message-ID: <208@serene.UUCP>
Date: 13 Dec 88 19:37:45 GMT
References: <4652@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <104@unibase.UUCP> <190@serene.UUCP> <13246@ncoast.UUCP>
Reply-To: rfarris@serene.cts.com (Rick Farris)
Organization: Serenity Systems
Lines: 31

In article <13246@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
>Speak for your own brain-damaged machine.  I "bootstrapped" my Toshiba
>laptop into being able to communicate by CTTY'ing it, running DEBUG, and
>blasting DSZ.COM to it as DEBUG "E" commands.  I did type backspaces
>occasionally in setting it up, and it didn't crash.  (For the curious:  I
>then sz'd Procomm 2.4.2 onto it and zapped DSZ; without a thorough test of
>its VT102 compatibility I won't use *any* communications program.)

Whoa, hold on a second.  No one has suggested that *application*
programs can't successfully use the serial port.  In fact most of us
have suggested using Carbon Copy, PC-Anywhere, Closeup, etc.  It's
DOS that can't handle things like backspace.

Had you hit a wrong key while you were calling up debug, and for
instance typed "debuh", and then tried to correct it by typing
backspace, your computer (yes, even your Toshiba laptop), would have
locked.  For reasons I won't go into, I've had occasion to use ctty
on a number of computers, and I've learned to be *very* careful.  For
instance, in the example I just posited, I would just hit the return
key, and let the computer tell me it couldn't find the command, and
then I would re-enter the command.

I do congratulate you on your novel use of debug, ctty, and dsz to
bootstrap external communications.  I remember getting an early
PS2/30, and trying to figure out (at 3AM) how to get software from my
5 1/4 inch disk equipped computer to it.  I thought of a lot of
things, but didn't think of using debug to bring in dsz.  Very
clever.
-- 
Rick Farris   RF Engineering  POB M  Del Mar, CA  92014   voice (619) 259-6793
rfarris@serene.cts.com     ...!uunet!serene!rfarris       serene.UUCP 259-7757