w8sdz%brl@sri-unix.UUCP (01/20/84)
From: Keith Petersen <w8sdz@brl> Forwarded message from Irv Hoff to Dave Hardy and myself... --- 01/12/84 Hi Dave / Keith Here is MDM717 as promised. Took longer than I had planned. Paul Grupp was telling me about a problem with the "V" flag. Took me most of the day to track that down as it was actual a dual problem. (1) stack problem in the MOmin area and (2) a DATAFLG problem in the RCVCHR area that took quite awhile to track down. That one caused the results with "V" to be similar to those with "R" and showed the non-ASCII characters as (0D) hex characters when it wasn't supposed to. The stack problem of course just bombed things. Dave Mabry also pointed out a problem with the LOGON message being inconsistent at times. (I had noticed that also but rarely use it and did not get around to tracking down the problem until yesterday. I am pretty sure that is solved now, I can't get it to act up any more on several different systems, and don't see how it can, now. The main thing I got into MDM717 for was to fix a problem the fellows are having on Compuserve with "save to disk". Since many do not have BUFEXC or CSEXEC, they just download ASCII files directly to disk (and take their changes on no errors). But MDM716 was saving to disk every 2k (instead of every 16k like I had it set for, Plouffe changed that, it's now back to 16k with a note to leave it that way for distribution copies and if an individual user wants to change it later, fine.) When set for 2k the problem during transfer to disk was aggravated badly. I was stripping off parity from incoming characters but failed to also do that during the time we picked up propagation delayed characters re- ceived after an X-off. It was very simple to fix with an ANI 7FH in the INMODEM area. Then started finding things that needed to be done with MDM716. Now I did not change anything Plouffe did, basically. I was going to, then decided against it. All I really did was add an option to use what he has now for GETACK, or with ACKNAK set to "normal ('YES') for RCPM, it resends the sector immediately on any non-ACK. Since XMODEM will time out with 10 errors, we do not ask if you want to "try again" after you get 10 errors - knowing that XMODEM has already terminated the file transfer at the RCPM end. But with ACKNAK set for ARPANET to "NO", you only resend a file with a valid NAK. This can take up to about 1-1/2 minutes the way Plouffe re-did the GETACK area, for each error. After 10 errors, it THEN asks you if you want to continue. So think we have the best of both worlds, now, and Plouffe should be happy, and I guess I am too. It's all automatic, with how you set the equate at ACKNAK. That about takes care of things. With any luck, this version will last 3-4 days before Sigi Kluger or somebody decides to take yet another crack at it. It is possibly my last effort at MDM7-anything. My next "big deal" is going to be called either "MU-1" or "MC-1" or "MCU-1" have not made up my mind yet. Will support RCPM and CIS protocols, and include BUFEXC as part of the program. Will be a little more along the lines of YAM, perhaps. Only assembly level source. This is already on several west coast systems now. These systems are so private the three big ones in this area are talking about going re- stricted on users. Maybe something along the lines of what Gary Shaffstall is doing in Denver or even Jud Newell. Hate to see that, but it is getting impossible to get on some of these at all, without calling on the voice line and making a schedule. Auto-dial would be nice, but one hates to work that hard to give programs away! Best regards, Irv