[net.micro] Linking Xerox 860s to PCs

major@bbn-spca.arpa (John Major) (11/27/85)

Has anyone out there had experience linking the 860 Xerox wordprocessor with
PCs?  The 860 is CP/M-based, with 8" disks.  We would like to, at the
minimum, transfer files back and forth, but being able to spool files to other
printers would be dandy as well.

I'm requesting this for a friend -- I know next to nothing about the 860s, and
Xerox hasn't been real helpful to her yet, so I'm hoping that someone has
already figured this one out.  I have experience with MSDOS Kermit, and
wondered whether Kermit would do.  There is a version for the Xerox 820, but I
don't know whether it'll work.

I'm sending this to info-cpm as well, but if anyone has suggestions about
where else to look, I'd love to hear.

Thanks --

John Major
major@bbn-spca.ARPA

edelheit@mitre.arpa (Jeff Edelheit) (11/29/85)

John - the 860, if set-up for communications can send/rec ascii files from the
word processor side of the machine.  As far as sending CP/M files, I don't know.

One gotcha on the WP files.  Xerox screwed around with the proportional 
space handling on the 860.  If you use proportional and justification, you
can get one or two extra characters on a line (e.g., 72 on a 70 character
line.).  This really messes things up if you are trying to move a justified
document from the 860 to another machine and edit it on the second machine.
The easy way around this is dondon't use proportional space and justification
on any document you want to transfer.

Hope this helps.

Jeff Edelheit
(edelheit@mitre)