Jive is an Utility programme written as an addition to Gumboot, the Real World Interface for Macs, and therefore is as Quick and Dirty as they come. Jive was written to provide a tool that would be very straight forward to use but contain enough features to make it a bit more pleasant to use then a normal Terminal application. It was written to make the most out of Microprocessor Development kits, the one that I am using at present is on based around the MC68HC11A8.
Specs…
Display of incoming data in binary, ASCII, and other formats.
Display of incoming data as a chart.
Able to save data as a file or down load data to a target processor in one command.
Soft scrolling and fast or slow display of incoming text.
Wide range of Baud rates and text sizes.
Replacement of incoming space characters with Tabs or Commas, this allows this application to be gather data usually bound for a printer and store it in a format that can be used by other applications.
• MultiFinder or System 7.0 does work but...... MultiFinder cannot guarantee ‘processor time when required, you may want to Format a disk or some other horrible task.
• Screen Redraws are Not supported, be careful. Avoid using dialog boxes.
The Menus.
File
Display Text
•Prompts you for a file and then flashes it past you eyes at unreadable speed. Sorry it’s only there to allow you to check on what is being saved to disk. If you wish to take a more serious look at a file I suggest a simple DA or Quit and Run a Spreadsheet or Text Editor, EDIT is a good choice.
Upload File
•Does the same as Display Text but churns it out to line to be received by a waiting, whatever.. used to Upload Programmes to Gumboot.
Save Text/Data
•Gives you a chance to save incoming data either ASCII text or if used with other Menu Items, Prompt for Text, it will save incoming data as converted readings. This Item Toggles the Capture Mode on and off as shown by a flag next to the item in the menu. Data will be saved as a Data file if jive in the Chart mode.
Quit
•This command closes the programme down, freeing the Modem port, and it also closes the current Data Capture file, just in case you forget.
Edit
• The Edit Menu is not supported.
Commands
Erase Screen
•The screen is cleared and, if Graph is selected, a new Grid is drawn, else it will reflect my current state of mind, blank.
Local Echo
•Useful as a check of what is going out to line, but that’s about it.
Soft Scrolling
•This item On or Off the soft scrolling of text as it appears on the screen, normally text shifts up in an abrupt fashion that is often hard to read, soft scrolling moves text up the screen in a much smother fashion.
Fast Display
•Incoming data can be quickly processed, halting all other processes until finished or data is processed on character at a time and allowing time for background tasks etc. Jive has a buffer for about 30,000 characters.
Baud
9600
•This is the current Baud rate used by Gumboot, resistance is useless.
Other…
•This feature is to be used carefully, some times Microprocessors need strange baud rates at the worst moments, so I included this option but it is only good from about 150 to 19,200 bits per second.
Options
Binary, Literal
• This translates the incoming data into Binary i.e. 1s and 0s. This includes incoming ASCII text etc.
Decimal
• This translates the incoming data into a Decimal value in similar fashion to Binary, Literal.
Hex
• This translates the incoming data into a Hex value in similar fashion to Binary, Literal.
NB a character is added to show which translation is being used.
• The Characters that we use to identify different types of numbering are;
$ - Hexadecimal
& - Decimal
% - Binary
eg $22 = &34 = %00100010
Binary, Decoded
• This will look at the incoming ASCII text and translate any valid character that represents a Hex character with the Binary Value, confused ? If the ASCII character ‘1’ has arrived then we will see 0001 placed onto the screen, ‘A’ would be 1010 etc., all other non Hex ASCII characters remain unchanged. Why ? if we are using the command MM FFFE with an MC68HC11A8 microprocessor Dev. Kit then we are asking for the contents of memory location FFFE and we will get back something like
MM FFFE E0
Nice but if we wanted to see if a particular bit had changed or what it’s condition was, this item would have displayed it like this
MM 1111111111111110 1110000
The command remains the same but we see the data as it is actually used by the microprocessor. Very handy for I/O work and fault finding on Address and Data buses.
NB this item is not fool proof, Commands that use the characters from ‘A’ to ‘F’’ will also be translated. Keyboard entry does not change.
Chart
• This changed the display to Chart Mode. As each character is read from the serial port it is translated to binary and drawn in a chart or line fashion onto the screen, when another character is received the display is shifted to the left and the new data is drawn. So if a programme is running in the target device and data is being received by Jive then it will continue to show this data as lines across the screen.
Incoming Samples
• This item allows you to filter out a varying number of samples. i.e. we might only display one in every 100 samples, the other 99 are discarded.
Space Replacement
• This item was included to make Jive do a little more than usual. If your Mac is hooked up in place of a printer then you could save the data to a file instead of it going onto paper. And if we replace the Space character with a Tab or Comma then it may make using this file with other applications, HyperCard, Spreadsheets or Databases, easier. Then again it may not.
Text Size and Font
• This applies to text displayed on the screen and may help make of a clearer display of data.
Gumboot
Programme...
•Like Upload and Display File, you are asked to select a file except that, files loaded this way are assumed to contain directives for Gumboot, so that it may load and then automatically run a programme. To enable some control over loading and running some ‘commands’ must be written into the file to be selected.
File Format
If you use an Assembler to generate a file for Gumboot then you should end up with a file of Motorola S records, these files are TEXT files and can be opened with most Text Editing tools. To make life easy, we add the commands, that are usually need to Programme Gumboot, to this file. All Gumboot commands must be in Uppercase letters, and to directives can be added to make it work with Jive, these are
‘r’, lowercase R, tells Jive to send a Return character.
‘d’, lowercase D, tells Jive to wait for a period before sending any more characters, this gives Gumboot time to shift data around or programme EEPROM addresses.
Example
BULKrd
LOAD Tr
S10600007EE00A91
|
|
S10A004427F9B7102F393F23
S9030000FCd
move 0000 0050 b600rd
G B604r
In the above example you can spot the Bulk and Load commands used to ready Gumboot for the data and, at the end, the commands to transfer the data to EEPROM and then start the programme. ‘r’ and ‘d’ are not sent to line.
Jive is an evolving application, it may be changed to reflect my current needs or at the suggestion of others, if you want a change made, feel free to contact me. An address will be included in this documentation or keep an eye the various BBSs, PD / Shareware people, and other sources.
You may copy this software for any non commercial purpose, but remember, it belongs to me, and if you want updates, changes or a PCB for a Microprocessor Experimenters Kit for Macintosh, then contact me.
