Kermit for Intel ISIS This version of Kermit was created by Bill Boyd, Hughes Aircraft Company, Fullerton, CA, from a version (MDS) received from Columbia University via the DSSO department of Intel. It incorporates some enhancements inspired by the Kermit version from Leigh Instruments (MD2) as well as a number of other enhancements. The ISIS Kermit provides dumb terminal emulation and file transfer for Intel Series II, Series III and Series IV computers running the ISIS operating system. It has the basic Kermit features and some additional ones. This version of ISIS Kermit differs in several ways from the earlier (MDS) version: (1) It has the following additional commands: SET (with operands BAUD-RATE, DEBUGGING, DISK, DUPLEX, ESCAPE, PARITY, PORT, PROMPT, RETRY, TAKE-ECHO, and WARNING), SHOW, TAKE, HELP, and server control commands CWD, GET, FINISH, LOGOUT, and BYE. (2) Its CONNECT escape protocol now matches other Kermit usage. The default escape character is still Ctl-D, but it can be altered at run-time or by changing one value in the source program. Supported escape controls are B (send break signal), C (close connection), ? (help), and a second escape character. (3) SEND, RECEIVE, and GET can accept an alternate file name. The ability to send multiple files with one command has been removed. (4) RECEIVE and GET will optionally rename an incoming file if the name is already in use. (5) Disk drive specifiers are stripped from file names sent to a remote Kermit. The default drive specification is prefixed to local file names which do not already have one. (6) It can respond to Ctl-X and Ctl-Z in order to interrupt transfers. (7) It has a better transfer progress audit message. (8) It supports nine baud rates from 110 through 19200. (9) It will respond to packet type "E" (error message). To the extent that I understand the definitions, the following describes the capabilities of the new version if ISIS-Kermit. An asterisk (*) marks items which are changed in this version. ISIS-Kermit Capabilities at a glance: Local operation: Yes Remote operation: No Transfers text files: Yes Transfers binary files: Yes Wild card send: No ^X/^Y interruption Yes * Filename collision avoidance Yes * Can time out: No 8th-bit prefixing: No Repeat count prefixing: No Alternate block checks: No Terminal emulation: No Communication settings: (Some) * Transmit BREAK: Yes * IBM communication: No Transaction logging: No Session logging: No Raw transmit: No Act as server: No Talk to server: Yes * Advanced commands for servers: (CWD only) * Local file management: No Handle file attributes: No Command/init files: Yes * The command set is described below. Any command or keyword may be abbreviated to as few letters as is needed to uniquely specify the item. Command keywords can be entered in any combination of upper or lower case characters. KERMIT [baud rate [port]] Initiates Kermit operation. Supported baud rates range from 110 through 19200, depending on workstation model. Supported communications ports are 1 and 2. At higher baud rates there is a possibility that characters will be lost, particularly in CONNECT mode when data is being transfered in both directions at once. This problem seems most evident with a Series IV, which is especially likely to lose characters when scrolling the screen, i.e. immediately after receiving a carriage return character. If file :F0:KERMIT.INI exists, Kermit will read commands from this file upon starting. See the description of the TAKE command below. BYE Causes Kermit to shut down and log out the remote server and return to ISIS. CONNECT Establish a terminal connection to the remote system. Get back to ISIS-Kermit by typing the escape character followed by the letter C. The escape character is Control-D by default. When you type the escape character, several single-character commands are possible: C Close the connection and return to ISIS-Kermit B Send a BREAK signal ? List all the possible single-character arguments ^D (or whatever you have set the escape character to be): Typing the escape character twice sends one copy of it to the connected host. CWD [remote-directory] If no directory is specified, CWD causes the remote Kermit server to change to the default directory. If a directory is specified, you will be prompted for a password and the server will attempt to change to the specified directory. If access is not granted, the server will provide a message to that effect. During password entry the password characters will not be echoed to the screen. The "rubout" key can be used to backspace over characters typed in error. Control-Y will reset password input and allow it to be restarted. To perform a "LOCAL CWD," use the SET DISK command. FINISH Causes Kermit to shut down the remote server without logging it out. GET filename [localfile] Request that a file be sent by a remote Kermit in server mode. HELP [command [subcommand]] Display help about Kermit commands. If requested without an operand, HELP displays a list of available topics. LOGOUT Causes Kermit to shut down and log out the remote server. RECEIVE [localfile] Receive files from remote Kermit. SEND filename [remotefile] Sends files to remote Kermit. SET option [operand] Controls the setting of several options. The options are BAUD-RATE, DEBUGGING, DISK, DUPLEX, ESCAPE, PARITY, PORT, PROMPT, RETRY, TAKE-ECHO, and WARNING. SET BAUD-RATE rate Sets the communication baud rate. Legal values for "rate" are 110, 150, 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, and 19200. Note that not all of these rates are supported by every Intel workstation. SET DEBUGGING ON/OFF Controls the display of debugging information. "SET DEBUGGING ON" will cause various status information to be displayed while Kermit is executing. SET DISK [:Fn:] SET DISK [n] Controls the default ISIS disk drive. The default disk drive will be prefixed to any ISIS file name which does not already start with a drive specification. The letter "n" above must be a digit (i.e., between 0 and 9). If the disk specification is omitted, there will be no default disk specification. SET DUPLEX FULL/HALF Controls the display at the local system of characters entered during CONNECT mode. Use FULL when the remote system echoes the characters you type. Use HALF to get the local Kermit to echo them. Half duplex is also called "local echo". SET ESCAPE [octal-number] Changes the "escape" character, which is used to control Kermit during connect mode. If an octal value is not entered on the command line, you will be prompted for the new escape character, which you enter literally. SET PARITY NONE/MARK/SPACE/EVEN/ODD Changes the parity of data sent to the remote Kermit. Note that since this Kermit does not support 8th-bit prefixing, any parity value other than NONE will cause binary files to be transmitted incorrectly. SET PORT port# Changes the I/O port. Permitted values for "port#" are 1 and 2. SET PROMPT [prompt-string] Changes the Kermit command prompt. The prompt string is limited to 20 characters. If no prompt string is entered, the prompt will be reset to the original value, "ISIS-Kermit>". SET RETRY n Changes the number of times that Kermit will retry packet transmission before giving up. Permitted values for "n" are 1 through 255. SET TAKE-ECHO ON/OFF Controls the echoing of "TAKE" file commands to the terminal. "SET TAKE-ECHO ON" will cause commands read from the "TAKE" file to be echoed to the terminal. SET WARNING ON/OFF Controls the handling of local file name conflicts. "SET WARNING ON" will cause a warning message to be issued when an incoming file has the same name as an existing local file. Kermit will then rename the incoming file. "SET WARNING OFF" will cause Kermit to overwrite the existing file. SHOW Display the settings of the SET options. TAKE filename Causes Kermit to begin reading commands from the specified file. When the end of the file is reached, Kermit will resume reading commands from the terminal. If Kermit encounters a "TAKE" command in a "TAKE" file, it will close the current "TAKE" file and begin reading the new "TAKE" file. In particular, it will NOT resume reading from the original "TAKE" file when the new file is exhausted. TAKE file command lines may contain comments delimited by a semicolon (";"). However, a semicolon which occurs after the first position of a command line will only serve as a comment delimiter if it is preceded by one or more blanks. There is no facility for continuing TAKE file commands.