[net.micro.atari] Kermit Through a TAC

steven@BRL-TBD.ARPA (Steven Segletes) (12/20/85)

There has been mention on the net recently of the difficulty of using kermit
through a TAC.  The problem can be circumvented by disabling the interception
of the `@' character.  Of course, this disables the (re)programming of the TAC
port until you log out and log back onto the TAC.  The procedure is

@b i s
@b o s

These two commands to the TAC request binary input and output to the port,
thus preventing the interception of any characters as special characters.

Steve Segletes
U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005-5066

<steven@brl.arpa>

p.s. the order in which the two commands are issued is important.  Using the
wrong order will result in the second command being passed through to the host
system.  It is possible that I have specified the wrong order above (I haven't
used this feature in a while), but it should be immediately obvious if I did.

MRC%PANDA@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (Mark Crispin) (12/30/85)

Steve -

     The correct order is:

	@B O S		(Binary Output Start -- binary to user from TAC)
	@B I S		(Binary Input Start -- binary to TAC from user)

      Binary Input Start disables any TAC commands from the user until
the connection is closed.

      On certain advanced operating systems (e.g. TOPS-20 systems with the
PANDA MODIFICATIONS), there are user commands which accomplish the same
effect and hence you don't lose anything by using them.  On the PANDA TOPS-20's
(SIMTEL20, STL-HOST1, and DREA-XX), the command is
	TERMINAL [NO] NETWORK-BINARY [INPUT | OUTPUT | BOTH]
The word "NO" after "TERMINAL" disables binary mode (else it is enabled),
and the default binary mode is both.  There is also a system call to do the
same thing.

     Perhaps some bright Unix hacker can figure out how to put this in Unix.

-- Mark --
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