jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (John Forrest) (03/23/91)
To provide serial connections from the Mac popper program
Eudora, we need to provide a tcp "pad" facility on our Apollos.
Basically a special user account is entered which should run
a pad program, which allows you to open a pad to a specified
port on a named machine. We are currently using telnet to do
this, but really the functionality required is as follows:
Program enters a "prompt mode" which allows the command:
open machine port
This provides a stream connection to the port, preferably
line-by-line, but maybe this would be optional. The echoing
needs to be off for all this process [telnet lets us down by
switching the echoing on even when we have turned it off], or
at least if it is already off, it stays off. Once entered,
stdin is send to the pad, and data received from the pad sent
to stdout, in a full duplex way (but line by line to save
overhead). When the connection terminates, the prompt mode is
re-entered. The alternative command is:
quit
Which will exit the program. [Again telnet lets us down here,
because it always exit and we have to put things into a loop,
and sometimes rely on ^C to abort]. If the program receives any
signals, it should just terminate.
Does anyone have a program like this, or at least tell me where
I might pick up mconnect - which seems a closer starting point
than telnet.
Would you please e-mail me - I don't read this group.
John Forrest
Dept of Computation
UMIST
jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk