Acquiring KERMIT-MS for the DECmate II (plus Bootstrap Procedures) by: Charles Lasner Charles Lasner Associates 72-55 Metropolitan Avenue Middle Village, New York 11379-2107 Telephone: (718) 894-6499 Net Mail: OC.LASNER@CU20B Like the DEC Rainbow, there are problems acquiring and bootstrapping KERMIT-MS for MS-DOS on the DECmate II. This file describes all known relevant methods to first acquire KERMIT, and then update it when future releases are available. 1) Obtaining the distribution file(s) MSVDM2.BOO (or MSVDM2.EXE) by communications methods. The DECmate II does not provide any readily available program to capture remote files directly other than the DEC-distributed POLYGON Associates terminal emulator (POLY-COMM) which is both expensive and obsolescent in light of KERMIT. In any case, the few users who have access to the POLYGON product and can use POLY-XFR to transfer a file from a host in conjunction with the other side of POLY-XFR (the expensive server side product for a variety of large systems) should use this method to obtain MSVDM2.BOO, the 4-3 encoded binary form of MSVDM2.EXE and MSBDM2.BAS, the MBASIC de-booing program. It is also possible to use WPS-8 Document Exchange (DX) to acquire these files as WPS documents (MSVDM2.BOO and MSBDM2.BAS are ASCII files). The problem is getting MSVDM2.BOO and MSBDM2.BAS to the other site with DX support (CU20B apparently does have DX-20); but this is the same problem as finding a host with POLY-XFR support and the files. DECmate II MS-DOS CONVERT will convert the WPS documents into MSVDM2.BOO and MSBDM2.BAS (CONVERT is a standard utility of DECmate II MS-DOS). DECmate II CP/M-80 WPSCONV can also be used to convert the WPS documents into CP/M-80 files MSVDM2.BOO and MSBDM2.BAS; MS-DOS CONVERT can create MSVDM2.BOO and MSBDM2.BAS in either CP/M-80 or MS-DOS formats. (See below for usage of the CP/M-80 file MSVDM2.BOO.) The DECmate II also runs OS/278 with K12MIT (aka KERMIT-278). This system can be used to obtain MSVDM2.BOO and MSBDM2.BAS and convert them to WPS documents via the standard OS/278 utility WPFLOP.SV. The user is referred to documentation elsewhere on running OS/278 and K12MIT. Unlike DECmate II MS-DOS CONVERT, OS/278 WPFLOP.SV is documented only via the help facility of OS/278, as there is no actual manual for this system. It is assumed that the user is a long-term familiar of PDP-8/DECmates and needs only the minimal release notes over and above older system documentation from former releases of OS/8 family systems to "figure it out." The command HELP WPFLOP will reveal all that is known about this utility. (CONVERT is adequately described in the DEC MS-DOS user manual; the user is referred to that manual for documentation on CONVERT, which is virtually self-documenting and menu-driven.) A typical usage of WPFLOP follows: }R WPFLOP Invoke WPFLOP. *RX51:MBASIC MSBDM2 The program will ask for the name of the file to be de-booed. Respond with the appropriate file name (MSBPCT.BOO, etc.); all normal (DEC) editing conventions apply including CTRL-C and DEL. The .EXE file will be created automatically using the file name imbedded in the specified boo-format file. The program will exit to CP/M-80; therefore, the user must run it again to de-boo an additional file. 4) De-booing recommendations. The only way to de-boo the file MSVDM2.BOO directly from DECmate II MS-DOS is to use the program MSBPCT.EXE (from either the C or ASM versions). This is the recommended method for updating KERMIT-MS to the next version, as all other methods are extremely slow. Use CP/M-80 MBASIC with MSBDM2.BAS once to convert MSVDM2.BOO into MSVDM2.EXE, or to convert MSBPCT.BOO into MSBPCT.EXE. Use MS-DOS CONVERT to move these files to the MS-DOS disk. MSBPCT.EXE and MSVDM2.EXE will satisfy all future updating needs as new KERMIT versions are distributed (MSVDM2.BOO). If MSBPCT.BOO is de-booed by MSBPCT.EXE the resultant MSBPCT.EXE will be smaller (no CP/M-80 conversion overhead); this applies to all .BOO format files.