phipps@fortune.UUCP (11/12/83)
Does anyone have a "termcap" file for the IBM PC, as used to communicate with a VAX by means of "pc-talk" or IBM's Asynch Communication Support ? I'm sure someone must have done this by now, but I'm new to the net, and the few weeks of retained "net.micro.pc" news items at my installation don't have it. -- Clay Phipps
johnston%lbl-csam@sri-unix.UUCP (02/01/84)
From: (Bill Johnston [csam])johnston@lbl-csam The IBM PC, in and of it self, looks like a dumb terminal; that is characters comming from the communication interface are sent directly to the screen. PC's with DOS 2.0 have loadable device drivers, one of which implements an ANSI terminal. Characters sent to the screen by using the appropriate DOS calls will be interpreted by this driver. Unfortunately, not all software makes use of the proper DOS calls, so characters may get to the screen without going through the ANSI driver, even if it is loaded. The most notable example of this are all BASIC programs; e.g. the PC-TALK communications program. Most commercial communications programs implement some terminal emulation in their program, usually VT-52 or VT-100. A good, public domain, communications program, which also implements reliable file transfer in the form of a "mini" FTP, is the KERMIT program distributed from Columbia U. KERMIT has implementations on 20-30 hosts and micro systems, including UNIX, VMS, VM/CMS, PC DOS, CPM, UCSD-p, etc. Each implementation is done in a language suitable for the host (C for UNIX, ASM fo PC, BLISS for VMS, etc.). PC-KERMIT emulates a VT-52 with some H-19 extensions. I have a termcap for this, which showed up on the KERMIT, ARPA net-billboard (Info-Kermit@COLUMBIA-20). The implementations are collected and distributed by Columbia. The distribution is via the ARPANET (free) or by tape ($100). Contact Frank da Cruz (fdc@COLUMBIA-20). N.B. Recently, some people around here have started using KERMIT for file transfer instead of UUCP since KERMIT will run nicely at 9600 baud, whereas UUCP seems not to. This is probably due to the fact that KERMIT is much simpler (and less capable) than UUCP. KERMIT, for instance, sends it's data through the terminal handler, letting it worry about flow control, which is probably where UUCP gets into trouble.