Importing binary files without removable storage nor non-bundled software (was: TKermitFTP

From: Dwight K. Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com>
Date: Thu Jan 6 16:43:34 2005

>From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj_at_wps.com>
>
>>> "Binary reads from a device are not
>>> allowed" is the message at 8753 in DR-DOS 3.41.
>
>On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>
>> The question I haven't seen answered yet is, "Well, why the hell not???"
>
>The real answer is: there is no out-of-band signalling, so one of
>the 128 in-band symbols (SUB, 26 decimal) is chosen to mean "END
>OF FILE". It's borrowed from CP/M-80; I don't know where DR got
>it; it seems un-DEC-ish.
>
>("Out of band" signalling is, for RS-232 et al, the hardware
>handshake lines. No one likes them, everyone complains like
>babies, so they have essentially been deprecated.)
>

Hi
 In the past when I wanted a non-block binary transfer,
I often had some value that I used as an escape character.
I'd choose a low frequency value to improve throughput.
It is simple, If you want to send a command value, you
send the escape character, first. If you just wanted the escape
character, you'd send it twice. For 8 bit data, you
had 255 commands. EOF could be one of those.
 It makes a simple protocol that is easy to implement in
code.
Dwight
Received on Thu Jan 06 2005 - 16:43:34 GMT