graham@DRCVAX.ARPA ("Daniel J. Graham") (07/27/87)
Greetings and Pervarications: I find that I need some help. Here is the scenerio: Our VAX 780 is tied to a Micom switch that also has a few modems on it as outdial lines. A user may log into the VAX, or may choose Outdial and have direct access to a modem for dialing things like DSIN. If the user has a PC for capturing the material he/she gets over the phone line, great, but if just a terminal, he is relegated to printing what comes over the terminal, than keying it back into the VAX. Our communications people will gladly make a direct connection from the Outdial service to a port on the VAX. What I need is a program that I can run that will attach itself to that port, send commands to it, and read the material coming from it and send it to my terminal and a file. Since DSIN and many bulletin boards don't have Kermit like packages, The program has to be completely self-supporting, no handshaking. Sending stuf to the port is as simple as opening the terminal port, say TTA0: as a file and writing to it. Reading what comes back is a different matter, though. This is where I am stuck. How do I know how many reads to issue? How can the program know that a carriage return, or a, "a" or whatever is required in order to continue receiving output. If the data is displayed to the screen, I can know that, but then how is the interaction handeled?? I am rather ignorant about communications and the like. Perhaps I am creating a problem that has been solved long ago. I solicit your suggestions, and possibly programs to do what I need. I appreciate all the help I can get on this one. Thanks very much, Dan Graham GRAHAM@DRCVAX.ARPA ------
carl@CITHEX.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick) (07/29/87)
> Our communications people will gladly make a direct connection from the > Outdial service to a port on the VAX. What I need is a program that I can > run that will attach itself to that port, send commands to it, and read the > material coming from it and send it to my terminal and a file. Since DSIN > and many bulletin boards don't have Kermit like packages, The program has > to be completely self-supporting, no handshaking. This means that there's also no error checking and/or correction in such cases. > Sending stuf to the port is as simple as opening the terminal port, say > TTA0: as a file and writing to it. Reading what comes back is a different > matter, though. This is where I am stuck. How do I know how many reads to > issue? How can the program know that a carriage return, or a, "a" or > whatever is required in order to continue receiving output. If the data is > displayed to the screen, I can know that, but then how is the interaction > handeled?? Given that you can't do error checking anyway, you might as well use the DCL command: $ SET HOST/DTE/LOG TTA0: This lets you deal interactively with whatever's hooked up to TTA0:, and keeps a log of it. You end up with wierd record formats, but they can be fixed fairly easily.