DYOUNG@USC-ISID.ARPA (C. David Young) (03/15/86)
I would like to report that I have successfully got the Jack Palevich's Kermit written in ACTION! running with my ATR8000 and MYDOS. What a nice program! I am so pleased with it that I am determined to eventually add a VT100 emulator to it when I get the time. Of course I will share it with the net also. I have fixed 1 bug that anybody who is using anything other than ATARI or OSS DOS should be aware of. It has to do with the way the end of directory is detected when it is being read through CIO. Normally the last record is something like "xxx FREE SECTORS". However, the exact format varies with different DOS's and you can't depend on it always being 17 bytes long (including $9B at end). Jack however uses this fact to detect the end of directory. He also assumes that the filespecs are that long. This is just not the case all the time. The only reliable way I have found to read the directory of all DOS's is to not assume anything about the length of the filespec (use the $9B to detect the end of one) and detect the last record by the fact that it does not start with a '*' or ' '. Thus, the fix to make the SEND option work is as follows: In KIO.ACT change the line IF DSPEC(0) <> 17 THEN RETURN(0) FI to IF DSPEC(1) > 43 THEN RETURN(0) FI If somebody with another DOS could try this out to make sure it works I would appreciate it if you would let me know. If it appears to work correctly for all DOS's then maybe we should consider putting it in the archives in place of the current KIO.ACT. Which brings up another point. How does one add things to the archives? When I soup up this Kermit with the VT100 emulator I am definately going to want to put it there. David Young -------