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- NOTE: This file applies to previous (2.27 or 2.28) releases of the program.
- It's not certain to what degreee it's valid for 2.29.
-
-
- This note describes the capabilities of MS-DOS MSKermit as implemented for
- the NEC Advanced Personal Computer (APC). The APC system dependent portion of
- the code (both port and terminal handlers) resides in the file MSXAPC.ASM.
- This is the only module required in addition to those that all implementations
- need.
-
- MSKermit on the APC supports both the standard serial port (as port 1) and
- the optional (H14) add-on serial port (as port 2). Port selection is
- performed using the SET PORT command. Any baud rate up to 38400 is legal
- although 38400 has never been tested and may not work well. The port is
- always configured as 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit. Any necessary
- parity is supplied by Kermit.
-
- The interrupt vector used by the optional port is jumper-selectable. Kermit
- is set up to use IR8 by default, so if another vector is required the
- MSXAPC.ASM file must be altered and reassembled. The changes are well
- commented, and only amount to changing the value of a conditional.
-
- Terminal mode support on the APC is relatively primitive. The only provisions
- that have been made for emulation are in the operating system firmware, which
- supports a limited subset of both VT100/ANSI and ADM-3A commands.
-
- Two pages of screen memory and rollback are also provided by the firmware.
- Control-uparrow scrolls back one line, while control-downarrow scrolls forward
- a line.
-
- Screen printing is performed by the CRTDUMP resident extension to MS-DOS
- using the control-print command. The print (or control-P) key alone causes
- Kermit to toggle echoing of the screen display to the printer.
-
- Key redefinition is provided, but only for the keyboard keys. The function
- keys must be defined using the system's KEY program. There is no direct
- access to the keyboard's scan codes on the APC, so instead each key is
- redefined by its ASCII value, limiting the usefulness of this function.
-
- The default escape character is control-]. Bugs in the firmware prevent
- this control sequence from being returned to the program, however, so it
- is necessary to instead use the left arrow key which sends the control-]
- code. Another alternative is to redefine the escape character in your
- MSKERMIT.INI initialization file.
-
-
- Despite these limitations, MSKermit for the APC is being released so that
- the benefits of its file transfer capability are available to APC MS-DOS
- users. It is to be hoped that these users will take it on themselves to
- enhance the capabilities.
-