A-Talk III -- Release 1.1 January 14, 1988 Copyright (C) 1988 Felsina Software This file contains information available after the printing of the manual for release 1.0 of A-Talk III. A-Talk III Release 1.1 offers substantial new features to the original Release 1.0. In particular, it now supports additional serial devices, allowing you to run A-Talk III multiple times and be connected to more than one host at the same time. A-Talk III also now supports ZMODEM Commands which permit one Amiga to control another one running A-Talk III. Also a clock/timer is provided to help you keep track of connect time. 0. PAL and MOREROWS "FULL" SCREEN SUPPORT ----------------------------------------- A-Talk III now supports PAL and MoreRows screen sizes, when using the "Full" Screen option. When A-Talk III is started, it detects the "current" Workbench screen size. From that information, it computes on the fly the maximum number of rows, and generates two items in the Terminal Rows menu with the respective number of rows for interlaced and non-interlaced Full screens. It also updates the corresponding values in the Quick menu requester. When using the "standard" NTSC screen, A-Talk III will allow a maximum of 25 and 50 lines using vertical overscan. 1. WORKBENCH VT100 SUPPORT -------------------------- This version allows full use of the VT100 emulator when using A-Talk III with a Workbench screen window. This can be used with host systems like UNIX and VMS where the terminal screen size can be redefined to any values of rows and columns. On an NTSC Amiga system, the A-Talk III Workbench window will come up with a size of 77 columns and 23 lines. When a "window resize" operation is performed, the number of lines and columns is recomputed. On a DEC VMS system one can use the following commands to reset the host terminal definition to a 77x23 screen: SET TERM/WIDTH=77 SET TERM/PAGE=23 When connected to a UNIX 4.2/4.3bsd system, one can create a "local" termcap file with the following entries: d0|vt100|vt100-am|vt100am|dec vt100:\ :do=^J:co#80:li#24:cl=50\E[;H\E[2J:sf=5\ED:\ :le=^H:bs:am:cm=5\E[%i%d;%dH:nd=2\E[C:up=2\E[A:\ :ce=3\E[K:cd=50\E[J:so=2\E[7m:se=2\E[m:us=2\E[4m:ue=2\E[m:\ :md=2\E[1m:mr=2\E[7m:mb=2\E[5m:me=2\E[m:is=\E[1;24r\E[24;1H:\ :rf=/usr/lib/tabset/vt100:\ :rs=\E>\E[?3l\E[?4l\E[?5l\E[?7h\E[?8h:ks=\E[?1h\E=:ke=\E[?1l\E>:\ :ku=\EOA:kd=\EOB:kr=\EOC:kl=\EOD:kb=^H:\ :ho=\E[H:k1=\EOP:k2=\EOQ:k3=\EOR:k4=\EOS:pt:sr=5\EM:vt#3:xn:\ :sc=\E7:rc=\E8:cs=\E[%i%d;%dr: dt|vt100-at|vt100at3|vt100 in A-Talk III with 50 lines:\ :li#50:co#80:\ :tc=vt100-am: dw|vt100-atw|vt100atw|vt100 in A-Talk III with 77x23 Wokbench:\ :li#23:co#77:\ :tc=vt100-am: The termcap file above defines the "standard" VT100 termcap entry (vt100-am), a modified entry that allows 50 lines by 80 columns in Full Screen mode (vt100-at3), and a modified entry that allows 23 lines by 77 columns (vt100-atw) for Workbench Screen mode. Assuming the local termcap file is named "mytermcap", the definition for a 77x23 VT100 screen is installed with the UNIX commands: setenv TERMCAP $HOME/mytermcap setenv TERM vt100-atw 2. CHOP ------- When chopping files (Transfer Auto Chop On), a temporary copy of the file is made. Therefore, you should "save" the file on a disk with a number of free bytes larger than twice the size of the file to receive. The same is true when transferring to a RAM disk. 3. WXMODEM ---------- This release includes support for the WXMODEM (Windowed XMODEM) protocol designed by Peter Boswell and currently available on People/Link. The Protocol menu includes a new entry named WXMODEM, and the PROTOCOL command of the A-Talk III script language allows an additional "w" parameter to request a WXMODEM transfer. It can be used as follows: PROTOCOL W RECEIVE filename 4. YMODEM-g ----------- Developing technology is providing phone lines data transmission at ever higher speeds using very specialized techniques. These high-speed modems as well as session protocols such as X.PC, provide high-speed and nearly error-free communications. YMODEM-g is a modification to the YMODEM Batch protocol where acknowledgements for data blocks are not used. Because it does not use error-recovery, YMODEM-g must be used with hard-wired connection or with an hardware error-correcting modem. When YMODEM-g detects an error data transfer is aborted. YMODEM-g requires UNIDIRECTIONAL flow-control to work at high speeds: the receiver should send X-off to the sender when its input buffer is full, and the sender should resume sending when receiving X-on. The Amiga serial device, as currently implemented in versions 1.2 and 1.3 of the system software, only allows BIDIRECTIONAL flow-control. Therefore, currently it is not possible to use flow-control with YMODEM-g in streaming (continuous) mode. As a result, we have found that YMODEM-g is reliable at receiving speeds up to 4800 bauds. No problem instead is present when sending files from the Amiga to another host using YMODEM-g: speeds up to 19200 bauds can be safely used in this case. Depending on the support from the host BBS, RTS/CTS handshake can be used, in place of X-on/X-off, which should allow faster speeds. The Protocol menu includes a new entry named YMODEM-g, and the PROTOCOL command of the A-Talk III script language allows an additional "g" parameter to request a YMODEM-g transfer. It can be used as follows: PROTOCOL G RECEIVE 5. PHONEBOOK/SETTINGS FILE LOCATION ----------------------------------- When looking for the Phonebook and the saved settings, A-Talk III now first looks in subdirectory "Settings" of the "current" directory. If no files are found, A-Talk III will then look in AT3:Settings. If no files are found, A-Talk III will put up a requester indicating that the Phonebook was not found. 6. ZMODEM ENHANCEMENTS ---------------------- * ZMODEM Resume A-Talk III now supports ZMODEM Recover/Resume of an interrupted file transfer both when invoked by the host (as in Rel. 1.0) and when selected locally on the Amiga. If the destination file exists, a requester will come up which will ask the user whether he/she wants to "Resume" or "Replace" the file. Selecting "Resume" will append the received data to the destination file and start transfer at the offset corresponding to the receiver's end of file. Selecting "Replace" will overwrite the old file with the received data: the old file's data is lost. As described in Chuck Forsberg's ZMODEM documentation, the Resume option will only be allowed when no "text conversion" option has been requested by the host ZMODEM program. * ZMODEM Speed The speed of ZMODEM send and receive has been improved by 60%, especially for Binary transfers. This will be noticeable only at speeds of 9600 baud and up. A-Talk III is able to transfer files at over 1000 char/sec. at 9600 bauds, and over 1500 char/sec. at 19,200 bauds when receiving to the RAM: disk with ZMODEM protocol and RTS/CTS handshake. * ZMODEM Remote Host Commands ZMODEM now supports remote commands from a host computer, generally a UNIX(tm) based system or another Amiga running A-Talk III Release 1.1. ZMODEM commands can be sent and received by A-Talk III. When receiving ZMODEM remote host commands, the commands must provide their own windows if they need to do input/output on the Amiga. For example, when using "sz" on a UNIX system, one can type: sz -i Clock on the UNIX system, and then select ZMODEM Transfer Receive on the Amiga. This command will instruct A-Talk III to execute the "Clock" program and return "immediately" upon successful startup of the program. Two versions of A-Talk III can "exchange" commands in a similar fashion. The "remote" user of A-Talk III can select ZMODEM Transfer Command. This will pop up a requester that asks to enter a command. For example, one could type in the requester: makedir RAM:mydir Then the "local" user of A-Talk III selects ZMODEM Transfer Receive. The command is trasferred and in this instance will instruct the local A-Talk III to run the "makedir" program to create the appropriate directory and resume execution only after the makedir command has exited. Entire sets of directories and subdirectories can be transferred with ZMODEM, when the same directory structure has been established on both the host and the Amiga, and GetDIR has selected the "root" of the corresponding Amiga directory tree. The ZMODEM command to be intered in the Transfer Command requester can be prepended by a single character code with the following meaning: Character Meaning --------- ------- none return only after the command has completed on the "remote" host. ~ return immediately upon the receiving host's successful receipt of the command + interpret the following command as the name of an A-Talk III script instead of a DOS command * Receive Cmd The ZMODEM Command "feature" can be misused. For this reason, by default ZMODEM commands are always rejected. To accept ZMODEM commands, the user MUST manually select Transfer Receive Cmd On. This setting cannot be saved. * ZMODEM Transfer Type When using ZMODEM and Ymodem Batch, the Transfer Type should be set to "Text" ONLY when receiving text files from PC-DOS or CPM-based bulletin boards. When transferring text files between Amigas and between Amigas and UNIX, the Transfer Type should be set to "Binary", since both Amiga and UNIX use the same end-of-line character and, unlike CPM and PC-DOS, they have no concept of an end-of-file character. 7. ADDITIONAL IBM PC ANSI SUPPORT --------------------------------- A-Talk III now provides FULL support of all IBM PC ANSI escape codes, when selecting ANSI Terminal, IBM PC Font, 8 colors and Full screen. For complete emulation of the IBM CGA, the following colors should be used: R G B ----------------- Color 1: Black 0 0 0 Color 2: Red 15 0 0 Color 3: Green 0 15 0 Color 4: Yellow 15 15 0 Color 5: Blue 0 0 15 Color 6: Magenta 15 0 15 Color 7: Cyan 0 15 15 Color 8: White 15 15 1 - HAYES Fail Messages The entire set of Hayes fail codes (VOICE/BUSY/NO DIALTONE) has been added to the Dial routine, which will fix the problem of timing out when the host has not generated the proper carrier signal. The returned fail message is displayed on the screen. - TALK Emulator When selecting the FULL screen and TALK Terminal, the incoming data is now confined at the top half of the screen. 8. RTS/CTS SUPPORT ------------------ A-Talk III now supports RTS/CTS handshake. This can be selected through the Amiga Preferences. After invoking Preferences, select "Change Serial". Then select Handshaking RTS/CTS. Click on OK and Save (or Use). Then you can run A-Talk III, and the serial port will be opened with RTS/CTS. RTS/CTS handshaking is faster than X-o/X-off. Therefore it is recommended with ZMODEM transfers. Besides the RTS/CTS selection, the Serial Buffer Size is also selectable from Preferences. The default is 8000 bytes. For file transfers at high speeds, one can also select a Buffer Size of 16000 bytes. 9. US ROBOTICS HST MODEM ------------------------ The US Robotics HST modem is a high-speed modem that is very popular with IBM PC-based bulletin boards. If you have such a modem, optimum performace can be obtained with RTS/CTS, 16000-byte serial buffer, and 19,200 baud. 10. PHONEBOOK ADDITIONS ---------------------- Two features have been added to the Phonebook: long distance codes and queueing. * Long Distance Codes At the bottom of the Phonebook area a new 35-character string requester, labeled "Long Distance Code" has been added. It allows the user to enter an MCI, PC PURSUIT or SPRINT access code to be prefixed to the actual phone number. For example it could contain the number: 1-800-347-6578W-12345-617-920-2050 The first part is the access code. This is followed by the Hayes "W" command, which waits for a dial tone. Then comes the phone company card "secret" access code and home phone number. The actual destination number is stored in the "Phone Number" string gadget. * Queuing At the bottom of the Phonebook area a new 2-digit string requester, labeled "Queue", has been added. The entered number "links" one host with another one. The allowed range of values is 1 through 60. To aid in linking various hosts to each other, the host names are now preceded by the "host" number in the center of the Phonebook. If an host is found to be busy, the one "linked" to is is tried and so on. Circular lists are allowed [1->2->3->1]. 11. MULTISERIAL, MULTIPARALLEL AND SCRIPT SUPPORT ------------------------------------------------- A-Talk III Release 1.1 supports multiple serial ports, multiple printer ports, and startup scripts, invoked from BOTH the CLI and Workbench. WORKBENCH SELECTION of OPTIONS ------------------------------ * TOOLTYPES ----------- A new serial device can be selected by setting the DEVICE and the UNIT in the icon ToolType. Use the Info Workbench command to set one or both of DEVICE and UNIT. The syntax is as follows: a) different Serial DEVICE DEVICE=name Example: DEVICE=sevenserial.device If not defined, the "default" serial device is "serial.device". b) different serial UNIT number UNIT=n where n=0,1,2,3 ... Example: UNIT=2 If not defined, the default serial unit is 0 (zero). c) different Printer DEVICE PRINTDEV=name Example: PRINTDEV=newpar.device If not defined, the "default" printer device is "printer.device". d) different printer UNIT number PRINTUNIT=n where n=0,1,2,3 ... Example: PRINTUNIT=2 If not defined, the default printer unit is 0 (zero). * TOOL and PROJECT ICONS ------------------------ The selection of "options" such as DEVICE and UNIT can be done on the A-Talk III TOOL icon or on a separate PROJECT icon. In this case the DEFAULT TOOL must also be set to AT3:ATalk3. A sample PROJECT icon that uses this feature is provided on the distribution disk, named "MultiSer". If one has 7 ports, for example, it is possible to use all seven of them, AT THE SAME TIME, just by duplicating the Multiser icon and setting a different UNIT number for each one of them. How about that :-) ----- $$$$ CLI $$$$ ----- CLI SELECTION of OPTIONS ------------------------ Format: ATALK3 [FROM ] [DEVICE ] [UNIT ] [PRINTDEV ] [PRINTUNIT ] Template: ATALK3 ``FROM/K,DEVICE/K,UNIT/K,PRINTDEV/K,PRINTUNIT/K'' Purpose: Run A-Talk III from the CLI and select initial script, serial and printer devices and respective units. Typing ATalk3 ? in a CLI shows the Format of the A-Talk III command line. Path: AT3: Example: ATALK3 FROM bix.scr DEVICE siosbx.device UNIT 2 As of this writing, the only additional serial ports that have been tested to be compatible with A-Talk III Release 1.1 are manufactured by ASDG: Two types of Twin-X based modules are supported: SBX-SERIAL/2 Two fully independent serial ports on a single module. SBX-SERIAL/4 Four fully independent serial ports on a single module. All SBX serial ports support baud rates up to 38.4KB. Each Twin-X can accomodate up to two modules, allowing 2, 4, 6, or 8 serial ports. The serial ports are accessed as UNIT 0 through 7. The serial device name for the SBX-SERIAL ports is named "siosbx.device". Please contact ASDG for information and pricing: ASDG Inc. 925 Stewart Street Madison, WI 53713 (608)273-6585 12. TALK2THREE TOOL ------------------- A tool called Talk2Three has been added to the Installation Disk. It allows automatic translation of "old" A-Talk and A-Talk Plus script files to A-Talk III script files. 13. MiniBBS SCRIPT ------------------ A script named MiniBBS.scr is provided in the Scripts directory. This script implements a simple Bulletin Board System for send/receive of files and display of text programs. 14. CLOCK/TIMER --------------- The Project Menu now includes a menu item that starts and stops a clock/timer that resides in the screen or window bar. The menu item works as a toggle. It reads as "Start Timer" when the timer is off, and "Stop Timer" when the timer is on. When the timer is started it will display the current date, the current amount of chip and fast memory and the value of the timer, initially zero. Pressing Right-Amiga-'\' will toggle the timer from the keyboard. To avoid excessive overhead due to the timer computation, the menu bar is not updated during file transfers and while there is no activity on the serial port. Press the mouse menu button (right) to force a timer update. 15. SWEDISH KEYMAPS ------------------- A set of additional keymaps created by Bjorn Knutsson is included in the keymaps subdirectory on the Installation Disk. These are modified versions of the "standard" swedish keymap. CLI and ARexx scripts are provided for installing the keymaps for use with A-Talk III. ADDITIONAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: --------------------------- We would also like to thank the following people/organizations for their contributions: Dan J. James for the WXMODEM code. People/Link for free access to their system for testing purposes. Bjorn Knutsson for PAL support. Jim Lampert for the MiniBBS and Talk2Three programs