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

From: Scott Stevens <chenmel_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Thu Jan 6 20:31:53 2005

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 14:23:26 -0800 (PST)
Vintage Computer Festival <vcf_at_siconic.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 6 Jan 2005, Tom Jennings wrote:
>
> > Sheesh, everyone's making this sooo complicated. There's no
> > conspiracy.
>
> Sorry...I guess I'm just all in a kerfuffle over why it was so
> difficult to allow binary transfers over a serial port. Yes, I
> understand the historical reasons why, but it's still stupid.
>

Anybody who was reasonably active with the PC back in the time period
being discussed who was aware there was a serial port on the machine,
and who actually had said serial port installed (the serial port was an
add-in and many machines never had one- I had to go out and spend 'big
bucks' on the first ISA serial card I plugged in my first PC clone)
would have had Procomm or Telix or one of the easy to use communications
packages. Xmodem wasn't some obscure, awful, and confusing thing to
use- it was built into the comm programs with easy setup menus, etc.

I moved my archive of text files/text captures from my CP/M system to my
first PC system using this very technique, and a simple three wire
nullmodem cable. The CP/M machine had a Modem7 executable on it that
made it easy.

-Scott
Received on Thu Jan 06 2005 - 20:31:53 GMT