Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uwmcsd1!lakesys!mikes From: mikes@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Atalk III 1.0e (a tad long, was Re: vt100 v2.9) Message-ID: <242@lakesys.UUCP> Date: 22 Dec 88 13:13:22 GMT References: <8812150227.AA09671@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> <14049@oberon.USC.EDU> Reply-To: mikes@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk) Organization: Lake Systems - Milwaukee, Wisconsin Lines: 253 In article <14049@oberon.USC.EDU> papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa) writes: > >Version 1.0e of A-Talk III, which I shipped to OXXI last week for duplication, >supports "multiple serial ports", through different UNIT numbers. As Matt >. . . >-- Marco Papa 'Doc' I am taking the liberty at this time to post the "Read-Me" file which came with my Atalk-III 1.0e upgrade yesterday (you can imagine my surprise in getting 1.0e, after requesting 1.0c!) (hope it's okay with Marco and OXXI :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- A-Talk III -- Release 1.0e December 8, 1988 Copyright (C) 1988 Felsina Software This file contains information available after the printing of the manual for release 1.0 of A-Talk III. 1. CHOP ------- When chopping files (Transfer Auto Chop On), a temporary copy of the file is made. Therefore, you should "save" the file on a disk with a number of free bytes larger than twice the size of the file to receive. The same is true when transferring to a RAM disk. 2. WXMODEM ---------- This release includes support for the WXMODEM (Windowed XMODEM) protocol designed by Peter Boswell and currently available on People/Link. The Protocol menu includes a new entry named WXMODEM, and the PROTOCOL command of the A-Talk III script language allows an additional "w" parameter to request a WXMODEM transfer. It can be used as follows: PROTOCOL W RECEIVE filename 3. YMODEM-g ----------- Developing technology is providing phone lines data transmission at ever higher speeds using very specialized techniques. These high-speed modems as well as session protocols such as X.PC, provide high-speed and nearly error-free communications. YMODEM-g is a modification to the YMODEM Batch protocol where acknowledgements for data blocks are not used. Because it does not use error-recovery, YMODEM-g must be used with hard-wired connection or with an hardware error-correcting modem. When YMODEM-g detects an error data transfer is aborted. YMODEM-g requires UNIDIRECTIONAL flow-control to work at high speeds: the receiver should send X-off to the sender when its input buffer is full, and the sender should resume sending when receiving X-on. The Amiga serial device, as currently implemented in versions 1.2 and 1.3 of the system software, only allows BIDIRECTIONAL flow-control. Therefore, currently it is not possible to use flow-control with YMODEM-g in streaming (continuous) mode. As a result, we have found that YMODEM-g is reliable at receiving speeds up to 4800 bauds. No problem instead is present when sending files from the Amiga to another host using YMODEM-g: speeds up to 19200 bauds can be safely used in this case. Depending on the support from the host BBS, RTS/CTS handshake can be used, in place of X-on/X-off, which should allow faster speeds. The Protocol menu includes a new entry named YMODEM-g, and the PROTOCOL command of the A-Talk III script language allows an additional "g" parameter to request a YMODEM-g transfer. It can be used as follows: PROTOCOL G RECEIVE 4. PHONEBOOK/SETTINGS FILE LOCATION ----------------------------------- When looking for the Phonebook and the saved settings, A-Talk III now first looks in subdirectory "Settings" of the "current" directory. If no files are found, A-Talk III will then look in AT3:Settings. If no files are found, A-Talk III will put up a requester indicating that the Phonebook was not found. 5. ZMODEM ENHANCEMENTS ---------------------- * ZMODEM Resume A-Talk III Rel. 1.0e now supports ZMODEM Recover/Resume of an interrupted file transfer both when invoked by the host (as in Rel. 1.0) and when selected locally on the Amiga. If the destination file exists, a requester will come up which will ask the user whether he/she wants to "Resume" or "Replace" the file. Selecting "Resume" will append the received data to the destination file and start transfer at the offset corresponding to the receiver's end of file. Selecting "Replace" will overwrite the old file with the received data: the old file's data is lost. As described in Chuck Forsberg's ZMODEM documentation, the Resume option will only be allowed when no "text conversion" option has been requested by the host ZMODEM program. * ZMODEM Speed The speed of ZMODEM send and receive has been improved by 60%, especially for Binary transfers. This will be noticeable only at speeds of 9600 baud and up. A-Talk III Rel. 1.0e is able to transfer files at over 1000 char/sec. at 9600 bauds, and over 1500 char/sec. at 19,200 bauds when receiving to the RAM: disk with ZMODEM protocol and RTS/CTS handshake. * ZMODEM Remote Host Commands ZMODEM now supports remote commands from a host computer, generally a UNIX(tm) based system. Remote host commands are typed on the host command line and then executed on the Amiga. The allowed commands must provide their own windows for input/output. For example, when using "sz" on a UNIX system, one can type: sz -i Clock This command will instruct A-Talk III to execute the "Clock" program and return "immediately" upon successful startup of the program. sz -c "makedir RAM:mydir" This command will instruct A-Talk III to run the makedir program to create the appropriate directory and resume execution only after the makedir command has exited. Entire sets of directories and subdirectories can be transferred with ZMODEM, when the same directory structure has been established on both the host and the Amiga, and GetDIR has selected the "root" of the corresponding Amiga directory tree. * ZMODEM Transfer Type When using ZMODEM and Ymodem Batch, the Transfer Type should be set to "Text" ONLY when receiving text files from PC-DOS or CPM-based bulletin boards. When transferring text files between Amigas and between Amigas and UNIX, the Transfer Type should be set to "Binary", since both Amiga and UNIX use the same end-of-line character and, unlike CPM and PC-DOS, they have no concept of an end-of-file character. 6. BUG FIXES ------------ - DIAL Script Command A bug has been fixed in A-Talk III 1.0 concerning the DIAL command of the script language. The manual says that the parameter of the DIAL command is a string between double quotes("). In reality, the DIAL command only accepted strings WITHOUT quotes. In A-Talk III Rel. 1.0e, the DIAL command works as described in the manual. Therefore now the double quotes are required. - Problem with MemWatch When running MemWatch (by John Toebes, Copyright (C) 1987 The Software Distillery) with A-Talk III Rel. 1.0, a requester would pop up indicating that A-Talk III was overwriting low memory. While fortunately this did not result in a GURU, it puzzled some users. This bug is now fixed in Rel. 1.0e. - Additional IBM PC ANSI Support A-Talk III Rel. 1.0e provides FULL support of all IBM PC ANSI escape codes, when selecting ANSI Terminal, IBM PC Font, 8 colors and Full screen. For complete emulation of the IBM CGA, the following colors should be used: Color 1: Black Color 2: Red Color 3: Green Color 4: Yellow Color 5: Blue Color 6: Magenta Color 7: Cyan Color 8: White - HAYES Fail Messages The entire set of Hayes fail codes (VOICE/BUSY/NO DIALTONE) has been added to the Dial routine, which will fix the problem of timing out when the host has not generated the proper carrier signal. The returned fail message is displayed on the screen. - TALK Emulator When selecting the FULL screen and TALK Terminal, the incoming data is now confined at the top half of the screen. 7. RTS/CTS SUPPORT ------------------ A-Talk III Rel. 1.0e supports RTS/CTS handshake. This can be selected through the Amiga Preferences. After invoking Preferences, select "Change Serial". Then select Handshaking RTS/CTS. Click on OK and Save (or Use). Then you can run A-Talk III, and the serial port will be opened with RTS/CTS. RTS/CTS handshaking is faster than X-o/X-off. Therefore it is recommended with ZMODEM transfers. Besides the RTS/CTS selection, the Serial Buffer Size is also selectable from Preferences. The default is 8000 bytes. For file transfers at high speeds, one can also select a Buffer Size of 16000 bytes. 8. US ROBOTICS HST MODEM ------------------------ The US Robotics HST modem is a high-speed modem that is very popular with IBM PC-based bulletin boards. If you have such a modem, optimum performace can be obtained with RTS/CTS, 16000-byte serial buffer, and 19,200 baud. 9. PHONEBOOK ADDITIONS ---------------------- Two features have been added to the Phonebook: long distance codes and queueing. * Long Distance Codes At the bottom of the Phonebook area a new 35-character string requester, labeled "Long Distance Code" has been added. It allows the user to enter an MCI, PC PURSUIT or SPRINT access code to be prefixed to the actual phone number. For example it could contain the number: 1-800-347-6578W-12345-617-920-2050 The first part is the access code. This is followed by the Hayes "W" command, which waits for a dial tone. Then comes the phone company card "secret" access code and home phone number. The actual destination number is stored in the "Phone Number" string gadget. * Queuing At the bottom of the Phonebook area a new 2-digit string requester, labeled "Queue", has been added. The entered number "links" one host with another one. The allowed range of values is 1 through 60. To aid in linking various hosts to each other, the host names are now preceded by the "host" number in the center of the Phonebook. If an host is found to be busy, the one "linked" to is is tried and so on. Circular lists are allowed [1->2->3->1]. 10. TALK2THREE TOOL ------------------ A tool called Talk2Three has been added to the Installation Disk. It allows automatic translation of "old" A-Talk and A-Talk PLus script files to A-Talk III script files. ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: --------------------------- We would also like to thank the following people/organizations for their contributions: Dan J. James for the WXMODEM code. People/Link for free access to their system for testing purposes. -- - Mike Shawaluk ...!uunet!marque!lakesys!mikes