compton@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (Michael Compton) (03/12/91)
Does anyone know where I might find XCMDs for writing to and reading from the Mac's serial port? Any hints or pointers appreciated. Thanks, Michael Compton NASA Ames Research Center, M/S 244-17 Moffett Field, CA 94035 email: compton@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov phone: (415) 604-6776
Paul.Heller@f421.n109.z1.Fidonet.Org (Paul Heller) (03/13/91)
MC> Does anyone know where I might find XCMDs for writing to and reading f MC> Mac's serial port? Any hints or pointers appreciated. MC> Thanks, Apple sells its "Serial Port Toolkit" of XCMDs thru APDA, and it's pretty good. I've used it with great success up to 38.4 kbps, and it seems solid. The only serious limitation I've encountered is really a fundamental HyperCard limit: you can't deal with ASCII 0s, since HyperCard doesn't "see" those. There's an XCMD called "SendSerial" floating around that will *send* ASCII 0s (and translate from Hex representations, too) but it doesn't receive. This shouldn't be a problem in normal comm work, but if you're talking to an instrument that uses ASCII 0 for something important, you'll have a problem doing it with HyperCard. * Origin: Twilight Clone: Macintosh - 301-946-8677 - 10 lines (1:109/421)
chesley@goofy.apple.com (Harry Chesley) (03/15/91)
In article <668818815.3@blkcat.Fidonet.Org> Paul.Heller@f421.n109.z1.Fidonet.Org (Paul Heller) writes: > MC> Does anyone know where I might find XCMDs for writing to and reading f > MC> Mac's serial port? Any hints or pointers appreciated. > MC> Thanks, > > Apple sells its "Serial Port Toolkit" of XCMDs thru APDA, and it's > pretty good. I've used it with great success up to 38.4 kbps, and it > seems solid. The only serious limitation I've encountered is really a > fundamental HyperCard limit: you can't deal with ASCII 0s, since > HyperCard doesn't "see" those. There's an XCMD called "SendSerial" > floating around that will *send* ASCII 0s (and translate from Hex > representations, too) but it doesn't receive. This shouldn't be a > problem in normal comm work, but if you're talking to an instrument > that uses ASCII 0 for something important, you'll have a problem doing > it with HyperCard. The 2.6 release of the Toolkit lets you deal with nulls now too. It adds XCMDs to send and receive bytes as numeric values (i.e., "100, 101, 102"), so you can send anything you want. It also works better when talking to non-ASCII devices. There's a corresponding receive XFCN. You can get it from APDA. It may also be available on apple.com or ftp.apple.com, but I'm not sure about that.