Subject: Re: a scary idea for the DEC Rainbow

From: [email-masked] (David Moisan)
Date: 28 Sep 1994 16:48:34 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>,
Dwight A. Schwartz <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Hi Rainbow lovers,

Well, I used to use the Rainbow and liked it, but that's not what 
this is about, exactly. :)

>	My idea is this:  MS-DOS Kermit for the Rainbow contains source code
>which directly handles the Rainbow's communciations hardware.  KA9Q appears to
>contain the code needed to run SLIP on an IBM-PC style MS-DOS machine.  How
>feasible is it to take the code from the Rainbow's Kermit for controlling the
>serial port hardware and using it within a program like KA9Q, with the end
>result that we would have SLIP for the Rainbow?  My thought was that then we
>could use the latest Rainbow Kermit (perhaps modified to connect to a BIOS

I have wondered this myself, albeit with my DECmate II, which has the Z80
card.  I know that, of all the terminal programs I've seen in the CP/M
environment, Kermit-80 was the only one with a specific overlay for 
my machine, oddly enough.

I have been tracking down leads for a CP/M-based KA9Q but have come up 
empty.  I've even thought of taking Phil Karn's source and running it 
through HiTech C (which I've not downloaded yet) to get a working (NOT!)
copy there.  
 
I don't think you need a PhD to do this.  I was planning on doing a SLIP
for my HP48 just from reading Douglas Comer's books and Phil's code,
though admittedly I've a CS degree. :)

You'd probably have to accept a more limited feature set than you'd get
on a Linux or even PC box, but for my purposes, that's fine.  The DECmate
will be connected to a TNC (radio modem) and the ham radio TCP/IP network 
(ampr) and thence by SLIP to my PC.  I'd like to explore the HP for 
portable applications.

I've crossposted this to comp.os.cpm, alt.sys.pdp8, and rec.radio.amateur.
digital.misc, since the folks there might have more ideas for us.

Dave

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| David Moisan, N1KGH    /^\_/^\   [email-masked]      |
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From: [email-masked] (Charles Lasner)
Date: 30 Sep 1994 08:35:25 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>(ampr) and thence by SLIP to my PC.  I'd like to explore the HP for 

Please be advised for any of these schemes that the Z80 is a captive 
processor on the DECmate.  It does zilch I/O.  The 6120 is in charge of 
all I/O, and port I/O is subject to the overhead of CP memory.  Note that 
the hardware limit of 19200 is *NOT* supported under CP/M (9600 baud max).

One of the major changes I need to make to improve Kermit-12 is to 
rewrite the slushware to provide CP hooks for polling the port during 
too-long CP sequences with -8 interrupts turned off in the terminal 
emulator, etc.  CP/M has no access to any of this.

Writing the support for the 6120 side would be more practical though!

cjl