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The Datafile PD-CD 1 Issue 2
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1991-01-06
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26KB
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549 lines
GrapeVine Terminal 1.32
(C) Copyright Julian Wright of Software Connections
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|Copyright subsists in all Software Connections software, documentation and |
|artwork. All rights reserved. Grapevine terminal v1.32 and all previous |
|released versions are shareware. This means that you may copy the |
|application and distribute it, or upload it to a bulletin board, so long as|
|there is no charge for this, except for a SMALL charge for the cost of the |
|disc(s). Furthermore, you must copy the ENTIRE application and it's |
|ORIGINAL data files. |
| |
| If you find this application useful, please send NZ$20 to the address |
| below, and you will be sent a copy of the next release if and when it |
| should become available. You will also be sent a catalogue of Software |
| Connections products. |
| |
| Grapevine is for the Acorn Archimedes computers with a Hayes Compatable |
| Modem. |
| |
| Mailing Address: |
| |
| Software Connections |
| Julian Wright |
| 17b Sheraton Place |
| Redwood |
| Christchurch |
| New Zealand |
| Telephone (03) 352 2381 |
| |
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Setting Up
----------
See Appendix A for details of how to have your serial cable wired.
See Appendix B for instructions on how to customise your phone number list.
IMPORTANT: Make sure your serial port is configured for 8 data bits, No
Parity, 1 Stop Bit (8N1). To do this, enter:
*Configure Data 5
and press RETURN. Then CTRL-Reset your machine.
Using Grapevine
---------------
Once you have loaded Grapevine, it will install it's icon on the icon bar as
usual. Clicking SELECT on this icon will open the control panel window, MENU
will bring up the usual Info and Quit options, and ADJUST will put you
straight into terminal mode.
While in terminal mode, Grapevine doesn't multitask. This was for speed, and
simplicity. It does multitask while dialing or transferring files, however.
To return to the desktop from terminal mode HIT THE BREAK KEY!!!
Control Panel
-------------
This has four status icons in the top half of the panel, and nine buttons in
the bottom half.
The status icon reflects what the BBS is currently doing.
The Carrier light lights up whenever a carrier signal is present on pin 9 of
the serial port.
The Time icon is used in conjunction with the autodialler, and displays the
number of seconds remaining before the autodialler will try another number.
This can be interactively altered via the up/down arrows beside it.
The fourth status icon is unlabled; it displays the name of the current BBS
that you are dialling or are connected to, or if you have disconnected and
are not dialling, the last BBS you were connected to.
Control Panel Buttons
---------------------
Four of these open/close more control windows. Of the other five, three
control the autodialler.
Hangup: This drops the DTR line on the serial port for a short period. This
has the effect of causing most modems to hangup (by default). If it
doesn't work on your modem, check that your cable is wired
correctly. (See Appendix A)
DialList: This button opens the dial list window. This contains a list of all
the phone numbers listed in the phone number file, one per line. To
the left of each entry is a button. If the button is selected then
the autodialler will include that entry in the list of numbers it
attempts. Some of the buttons may be shaded and unselectable, which
means that that particular BBS is not online 24 hours, and is not
online at the moment. This makes it difficult to accidentally call
a BBS which is down. The up/down status of all the numbers is
revised every minute, which may result in some BBSs suddenly
becoming selectable, and others being deselected, depending on
the time information stored in the phone number file. (See
Appendix B)
You can dial a specific BBS by clicking on it's name. This is one
way to initiate the autodialler. Another is by clicking in the
highlighted AutoDial button on the control panel.
AutoDial: This button starts the Autodialler, or stops it if it was already
running. The AutoDialler will cycle through all the numbers
selected on the dial list. A number is selected if the button
beside it is selected, as detailed above. Initially all buttons are
deselected, unless you have altered the default phonenum file. (See
Appendix B)
While the autodialler is running the Time Left icon will show the
remaining amount of time the autodialler will wait for a connection
before going on to the next number in the list. You can alter this
time (even while it is running) via the Wait Time entry in the
DialList window menu. You can also alter it via the arrows beside it.
Whenever you alter this button, Grapevine will perform a hangup
first (you will see the hangup button flash).
Hold: This is a togglable button also. When autodialling and the time
left for a number to connect has run out, normally the autodialler
will move on to the next selected number in the list. If this
button is selected, the autodialler will redial the current number
instead of moving on.
Next: This button forces the autodialler to stop waiting for the current
number to connect, to hangup and immediately try the next number
in the list. If the autodialler was not running already, it is
activated. This button can be used in conjunction with the Hold
button to immediately redial the current number. If the inter-dial
delay is set to greater than 0, (defaults to 3), then dialling will
pause for the specified length of time first. To cancel the
interdial delay and move straight on to the next number, click on
Next again.
Receive: This button opens the Receive File window, which is used to
initiate file reception.
Transmit: This button opens the Transmit File window. Drag a file onto this
window to setup the transmission.
Modem: This button opens the Modem Control window, from which the baud
rate and terminal type can be selected. Note that by default when
autodialling the baud rate and terminal type get changed, every
time the autodialler tries a new number, to the configured settings
for the new phone number. To prevent this from happening, untick
the appropriate feature under the Modem submenu of the Modem
Control menu. For example, if you want to make a call to a BBS
using the ASCII terminal for speed, select ASCII on the Modem
Control window (and Standard character set), and untick the
"Set Terminal" option on the Modem submenu.
The Auto LF button when selected causes linefeeds to be executed
whenever a carriage return is sent. If all screen input appears on
one line, set this button. This button has no effect in Atari
mode, as in this mode a CR automatically does a LF anyway.
The Loc Echo button will cause all characters you type to be
echoed to the screen as well as being sent out the serial port,
and in addition to characters received from the serial port. This
enables you to see what you are typing when you are directly
connected to another terminal, rather than to a BBS. If it is
selected when you are connected to a BBS, everything you type will
appear doubled.
The Rem Echo button has no effect in this release of the terminal.
Terminal: This button provides another way of entering terminal mode
manually. To return to the desktop from terminal mode HIT THE
BREAK KEY!!!
Terminal Emulations
-------------------
Grapevine currently emulates four terminals: Ascii, PetAscii (C64), AtAscii
(Atari 800), and ANSI (IBM). Ascii and AtAscii are the fastest, as they are
both done in machine code and are both monochrome. Although Skypix is listed
in the modem menu and Amiga as a character set, they are not yet implemented.
Use Ansi in preference to Skypix because of this.
The Ansi emulation is the most comprehensive of the four, and goes further
than a lot of other terminals I have seen. For example, the first six
function keys transmit the appropriate Ansi codes, as do the Home and End
(Copy) keys. PageUp, PageDown and Insert transmit control codes that work on
Searchlight BBSs, even though they are not strictly ANSI, until I can find a
more complete documentation on what they should REALLY be transmitting!!!
They may work on other BBS systems: experiment to find out.
The PetAscii emulation provides facilities for sending colours: f1 - f8 and
SHIFT f1 - SHIFT f8 will send C64 colour codes.
There is a line copy facility: Hit COPY and then you can use cursor copying
correctly for one line. In the ANSI terminal mode, you have to use SHIFT COPY
as COPY(END) already has a defined function.
All translations except Ascii send appropriate control codes for the cursor
keys.
Version 2 phonenum files allow you to specify a macro string for each entry.
To send this macro (like a function key definition), hit F12. This works in
all terminal emulations. See Appendix B for more details.
Menus
-----
There are three menus provided: the Iconbar menu, the Control menu, and the
DialList menu. The first is available on the icon bar (strangely enough!) and
allows you to Quit Gravepvine or see the Info window, as usual.
The Control menu is available from the Control Panel and the Modem Control
window, and has the following items:
Info: Display the info box.
Buffer: Control the capture buffer. This is a sub menu where you can
view information about the size of the buffer, turn capturing on
and off, save the contents of the buffer, and clear it. Text
captured is first filtered of all control and colour codes. If
the buffer is filled to capacity, capturing will be
automatically turned off.
The buffer size can be altered by dragging Grapevine's slot size
bar in the Task Manager, and defaults to 8k.
Display: From this submenu you can change the width of the display
between 40, 80, and 132 columns. Note this also gets changed by
the autodialler when it dials a number, unless you untick the
Set ScrWidth option in the Modem menu as outlined above.
You can also alter the appearance of the cursor from here. I
like a non-flashing block cursor and this is the default. If
you don't you can change it here.
Modem: This has four tickable options for Terminal Type, Character Set,
Baud Rate and Screen Width. If any of these are unticked, then
the last selected Terminal/Charset/Baudrate/ScrWidth will be
used instead of the default for the current number being
dialled.
You can also set the Prefix and Suffix strings for the dialler
here. These are what the autodialler sends before and after the
actual phone number, respectively, and before the final CR. For
example if you want to make a call from work you might change
the dial prefix from "ATDT" to "ATDT 1," to dial an outside
line. Or you might want "ATPD" or "ATDP" to select pulse
dialling for the numbers, if you are unfortunate enough to have
a manual exchange that can't cope with tone dialling.
File Xfer: This only allows you to adjust the ASCII upload protocol at
present. The ASCII sub menu has four options:
Expand Blanks: When this is ticked, blank lines in the text file
being sent will be expanded to <space><return>.
This prevents blank lines from causing problems
on editors which use a blank line to signify
end-of-text-entry.
CR: When this is ticked all LFs in the text file will
be sent as CRs.
LF: When this is ticked all CRs in the text file will
be sent as LFs.
Delay: This allows you to specify the rate at which the
text is transmitted, in centisecs/char.
Voice: If you untick this option, Grapevine will not utter it's usual
comment whenever a connection is achieved, but will instead be
silent :-)
Auto Return: When this option is ticked, the system will return from terminal
mode when the carrier has been dropped. This option is only
available in the IBM ANSI and CBM PetAscii terminals as yet.
If you enter terminal mode by clicking on either the TERMINAL
icon in the control window or on the iconbar icon with adjust,
and you are not online, this option will be automatically
disabled, to prevent you from getting booted out of terminal
mode immediately!
Auto Redial: When you return from terminal mode to the desktop, if this
option is ticked and you are not online, the AutoDialler will
automatically resume dialling the remaining selected numbers in
the phone list.
The DialList Menu is available from the Dial List window (strangely enough!).
Select All: Select all the numbers in the list for dialling (except BBSs
not online yet)
Clear All: Deselect all numbers in the list.
Load Default: Will reload the default phonenum file (Stored inside the
!Grapevine directory as "PhoneNums"), including all selections
Save: Enables the current phonenum file, with selections, to be
saved.
Dial Wait: Alter the length of time the autodialler will wait for a
connection before trying the next selected number. Numbers
lower than 10 secs, and higher than 255 secs are rejected. This
time can also be altered on the fly from the control window
via the up/down icons, should you wish to modify it in a hurry.
Inter Wait: Alter the length of time the autodialler will wait in the
interval between two numbers being dialled. Set this to 40 and
the Dial Wait to 20 in order to have a BBS number attemped once
every minute, waiting 20 secs for an answer and twiddling it's
thumbs for 40 seconds, for example.
Transferring Files
------------------
Grapevine currently supports Xmodem, Xmodem CRC, and Xmodem 1K. When
receiving files, if Xmodem is selected, the precise format will be auto
detected. CRC will be used in preference to checksumming. When transmitting,
You must select either Xmodem (128) or Xmodem 1K (1024), since if the other
end doesn't support 1K packets there is no way for this end to know about it.
However it will still try CRC first and it that doesn't work it will try
Checksum as a last resort.
Selecting a protocol is done by clicking on the appropriate button on the
transmit or receive window. Sometimes Xmodem 1K is mistakenly named Ymodem.
In this situation there is usually also a Ymodem (Batch) option. It is
intended to put Ymodem (Batch) and Zmodem into a later release.
Xmodem 1K is best, except on very noisy lines where straight Xmodem CRC
works better due to the smaller block size. Plain vanilla Xmodem is found
virtually universally, and is provided for compatability.
ASCII uploads are also now provided, but operate slightly differently to
normal uploads.
Downloading (Receiving) a file
------------------------------
1 - Make sure the other end is transmitting the file.
2 - Return to the Desktop (Break key) and open the Receive window.
3 - Enter the filename of the file you are receiving into the filename icon.
4 - Choose the file type of the file you are receiving (Normally Data or
Archive)
5 - Chose the protocol the other end is using to transmit the file. At the
moment the Xmodem icon also works for Xmodem CRC and Xmodem 1K, and is
already selected.
6 - Drag the file icon to a filer window.
The File Transfer window
------------------------
A file transfer status window will appear while the transfer takes place. If
you know the length of the file you are receiving you can enter it into the
Total Bytes field and Grapevine will estimate how long the transfer will
take, and continually revise this estimate. You can cancel the transfer at
any time by clicking on the Cancel button.
While transmitting or receiving a file, the only button (of Grapevine's) you
can click on is the Cancel button on the File Transfer window.
Whenever a transfer is completed or aborted, terminal mode will automatically
be reentered.
Uploading (Transmitting) a file
-------------------------------
1 - Make sure the other end is prepared to receive the file.
2 - Return to the desktop (Break key) and open the Transmit File window.
3 - Drag the file you wish to transmit onto the Transmit window. It's
pathname will appear in the top icon. Alternatively, merely enter the
pathname into the top icon if you are feeling masochistic! :-)
4 - Choose the protocol the other end is expecting.
5 - Click on the Send File icon. The File Transfer status window will appear
as for Receiving.
ASCII Uploading
---------------
1 - Set up the other end (eg enter the message editor on the BBS)
2 - Follow steps 2-3 in "Uploading (Transmitting) a file"
3 - Ensure the appropriate otions for ASCII transfer are set in the
FileXfer->ASCII submenu. See the menu description above for details.
4 - Choose ASCII as your transfer protocol.
5 - Click on the Send File icon. Terminal mode will be reentered
automatically and you will be able to see the progress of the transfer.
You may interrupt the upload at any time by returning to the desktop
(BREAK), and continue it by returning to terminal mode, or abort it by
clicking on the CANCEL button on the transmit file window.
6 - When the file has been transmitted, Grapevine will stay in terminal mode,
and keyboard control is resumed; you can now save your message, for
example.
Try capturing a message in the capture buffer, saving that to !Edit, deleting
unwanted lines and ASCII-uploading the result direct from !Edit, in your
reply message - voila! A quoting facility!
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Appendix A - Serial Cable Connections
=====================================
Here follows a diagram of the necessary connections for Grapevine terminal
system to work properly. They are as far as I know the informal standard
agreed upon by commercial comms software developers for the Arch.
Pins 1, 4, and 8 must be connected together inside the 9 pin plug. This
is to avoid the well known serial port chip bugs. The modem's DCD (Data
Carrier Detect) signal has been rerouted to the Arc's RI (Ring Indicator)
most modems broadcast a software RING signal anyway, an even then it's
not really necessary to detect it for the modem to answer the call.
Arc (9 pin) Modem (25 pin)
----------- --------------
+---1---DCD
|
| 2---RxD------------------------RxD----3
|
| 3---TxD------------------------TxD----2
|
+---4---DTR------------------------DTR---20
|
| 5---0v-------------------------SG-----7
|
| 6---DSR------------------------CTS----5
|
| 7---RTS------------------------RTS----4
|
+---8---CTS
9---RI-------------------------DCD----8
Of course you can connect the Modem pin 20 to any one of pins 1, 4, or 8
on the Archimedes plug, as they are all connected together anyway.
Appendix B - Customising the Phone Number file
==============================================
A phone number file has the type 710 - "PhoneNum". It is at present a text
file and can be edited or created within !Edit or your favourite text editor.
It consists of a CHR$(0) byte, a version number byte (currently 2), followed
by up to 64 consecutive entries, each of ten lines in length. If you are
using !Edit to create the file, enter CTRL-@ and CTRL-B, for the header.
A couple of such entries might be:
ArchPower
890 769
3
1800
0830
4
4
80
My Name|Mpassword|M
Enterprise III
650 792
3
0
0
5
5
80
My Alias|Mpassword|M
*
for ArchPower BBS and Enterprise BBS respectively.
Line
----
1. BBS Name. This can be up to 31 characters in length. (eg "ArchPower")
2. Phone number. This will be passed directly to the modem and so may
contain embeddes Hayes commands, or be punctuated with spaces, dashes and
parentheses as appropriate. It must be no longer than 15 characters in
length, however. (eg "890 769")
3. Terminal type. This can have one of four values as follows:
0 - ASCII
1 - Commodore (PetAscii)
2 - Atari (AtAscii)
3 - ANSI (IBM)
Both the example BBSs have ANSI (3) as their default terminal type.
4. Start time. This is the time the BBS starts up every day, and is entered
in 24 hour format as a single number. For example Archpower BBS starts
up at 6:00pm every night, so it's field is set to 1800. Enterprise BBS is
up 24 hours a day, so it's field is set to 0.
5. Stop time. This is the time the BBS goes down every day. Archpower BBS
goes down at 8:30am so it's stop time is 0830. Enterprise BBS also has a
0 in this field, because it is a 24 hour BBS.
6. Receive baud rate (Rx) for this BBS. A number between 1 and 15 is
expected here. Most common baud rates are as follows:
1 - 75 (Two fingered typists can sometimes outpace this!)
3 - 300 (Low end of scale)
4 - 1200 (Normal)
5 - 2400 (Better)
6 - 4800 (Nice!)
7 - 9600 (Really nice!)
8 - 19200 (Lucky devil! :-) )
Other baud rates can be found in your manual under the *FX 7 command
description. (eg ArchPower BBS is a 1200/1200 system)
7. Transmit baud rate (Tx) for this BBS. As for Receive baud rate. Thus it
is possible to have a split baud rate like 1200/75 (4 & 1 for lines 6 &
7 respectively)
8. Column width for this BBS. Can be 40, 80, or 132 at present. Both example
BBSs have a default width of 80 columns. (My Standard Colour monitor
makes 132 column text difficult to read! :-( )
9. Macro definition for this entry. This string will be OS_GSTransed and
sent out when you hit F12 in terminal mode. (eg. for Archpower BBS,
hitting F12 will send my name and password with returns after them). This
must be less than 80 characters long.
10. Selected flag. If there is a '*' here then this entry will be selected
when this phonenum file is loaded. Archpower will NOT be selected (the
line is blank for Archpower), but Enterprise WILL be selected. Note that
the start and stop times override this setting: if Enterprise was not 24
hours and this file was loaded outside Enterprise's hours, then
Enterprise would still be deselected and unselectable.
Error checking is not performed on the file as it is read in, so be careful!
The default phone number file is called "PhoneNums" and can be found inside
the !Grapevine application directory. You can have other phone number files
elsewhere (eg a list for out-of town numbers), and double-clicking on the
phone number file will load Grapevine using that file.
Remember if you create a new phone number file to set it's type to 710 using
*SetType <filename> 710
or
*SetType <filename> PhoneNum
A new phonenum file can now be loaded at any time, by double-clicking on it
or dragging it to a Grapevine window (except the transmit window of
course!). Old format phonenum files can still be loaded (the old 8
lines/entry version), and the macro definitions will be set to "" for these
files. When you save a phonenum file, it will be saved as a new format file
(which is incompatable with older versions of Grapevine - before 1.31)
Appendix C - Possible improvements for the future
=================================================
Additional file transfer protocols - Ymodem Batch and Zmodem in particular.
If I can find out anything about ArcFer from Hugo Fiennes maybe even that!
True multitasking, if I can figure out a way to do it fast enough in a
window...
Complex time expressions in the phone number file, for BBSs with variable
times up and down, depending on the day of the week etc.
Storing defaults in a Config file.
If there is anything else you would like to see in the program, feel free to
drop me a line at my address at the top.
--== END OF FILE ==--