[comp.sys.northstar] &$%#$ mailers!!!

jb@aablue.UUCP (John B Scalia) (06/06/89)

This message is intended for cpsvax!schon. The idiot mailer bounced twice,
and I'm hoping he's still reading reading this group. If you're not interested
in Northstar problems and you're not the intended "victim" hit "N" now ...

PS. if you are still going to read this, comp.sys.northstar is more
appropriate to follow-up.



Hi, saw your posting about the Northstar problem. I had to do something
very similar a couple of years ago. (BTW, I used to work for a Northstar
dealer.) Basically, I had to move the data from a Horizon up into this
*nix box, a Convergent Technology S/640.

I solved the problem fairly easily because the S/640 has a dedicated CPU
for I/O processing allowing communication rates up to 56K baud. Basically,
I just told the Horizon to copy the datafile out a printer port which was
attached to the input of a Wyse (Yuck!:-) terminal. The terminal was set
to receive data on its aux port and allowed the keyboard to remain active.
Thus, prior to transfer, I typed "cat > datafile", and initiated the transfer
from another terminal still hanging on the Horizon. Easy, but you're still
not in a PC format, though the principles might be the same.

Another solution, since you didn't indicate whether the requred datafiles
were printing ASCII only or otherwise, would be to port the 'nets programs
uuencode and uudecode to both machines. You could encode the datafile
on the Horizon, break it up into chunks, and copy it reliably using floppies
to the Dimension where it would be reassembled and uudecoded. I would
assume that your friend still has whatever programming languages they used
still available on the Horizon, but if they don't, drop me a line. I still
have an old Horizon here in my office with Turbo Pascal on it and I could
send a real live executable on a Horizon format diskette.

PS. My Horizon ran under TurboDos - the CP/M look-alike. That may be different
from your friend's unit, but they should still be compatible (the techniques
that is). Good Luck and let me know if you need any help.

John B. Scalia

-- 
A A Blueprint Co., Inc. - Akron, Ohio +1 216 794-8803 voice
UUCP:	   {uunet!}aablue!jb	

Sometimes they do let me speak for the company, not today though.