N E W A U X 1 . 0 0 ------------------------- released 7 sep 92 written and copyright 1992 by Thomas Lopatic ideas, suggestions and beta testing by Christian Kahl 1. Copyright and distribution All parts of this software package are written and copyright (c) 1992 by Thomas Lopatic. You may freely distribute this package as long as the copyright notice is left intact and the archive and the files contained are not altered in any way. However, you are not allowed to accept any payment except a reasonable and thus nominal fee to compensate the costs of the required magnetic media. Single parts of this package must not be distributed. Please make sure your package is complete. Compare the contents of your archive to this list of contents. File Length --------------------- NewAUX 5172 AUXEdit 8352 NewAUX-Handler 3988 NewAUX.config 42 NewAUX.doc 8808 'Commodore' is a trademark of Commodore Business Machines, Inc. 'Amiga' is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. 2. DISCLAIMER IN NO EVENT WILL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ANY DEFECT IN THE PROGRAMS. 3. What is NewAUX? Just as the name suggests, NewAUX is a substitute for the original AUX device supplied by Commodore. NewAUX was designed to meet the special needs of people running a bulletin board system on their Amiga. However everyone else using the AUX device might enjoy the new features provided by this package. NewAUX allows you to monitor the data passing your serial port on a separate screen. For example if someone is working with the remote shell of your BBS you can watch him working. Moreover NewAUX can be configured to use its own setup thus being completely independent from the settings made with the 'Preferences' program. Apart from that this package works with any serial device and any unit number. It therefore supports even multi serial port expansion boards. 4. Installation Copy the 'NewAUX-Handler' to your 'l:' directory. The 'NewAUX.config' must be located in your 's:' folder. Move the other files anywhere you want them to be. 5. How to use NewAUX In order to use the NewAUX handler you have to mount it. In contrast to the original AUX device on your Workbench this is not accomplished by using 'mount' since this command does not support unit numbers for AUX-like devices. So use the 'NewAUX' command instead. Specify the unit number of the serial device to be used and the name to access the device. For example NewAUX 0 AUX: would mount a device named 'AUX:' and assign it to the internal serial port of your Amiga computer. Just like 'mount AUX:' did in former times. If you run a multi serial board you might need something like NewAUX 3 AUX3: which would mount an AUX device accessible by the name 'AUX3:' and using unit 3 of your multi port serial board. It is just this easy. To alter the settings of your NewAUX device use the 'AUXEdit' command. It allows you to change the most important settings of your serial device when using NewAUX. Just press the letter surrounded by the square brackets '[' and ']' and either watch the parameter change automatically or, if required, enter a new value or character string. If you do not enter anything the old value will be restored when you press the or key. The 'Lines' parameter sets the height of the screen used for monitoring serial activity. Whenever a program opens the NewAUX device a window will be opened on this screen. If many serial units are used at the same time all windows will be opened on the same screen thus giving you a great overview of serial traffic. Apart from monitoring the data received and sent by your serial port you can even type text when the monitor window is active. Everything you type is included in the data stream just as if you were sitting at the remote end. A lines value of greater than 256 automatically makes the screen interlaced. The access mode can either be 'shared' or 'exclusive'. If you want NewAUX to work with your BBS always use 'shared'. This enables your BBS-Software to share its serial device unit with the NewAUX program. If NewAUX does not have to function with other programs accessing the same serial unit you may specify 'exclusive'. But this normally does not lead to any advantages so keep it 'shared'. The 'Buffer' is used to store incoming data in order to avoid loss of data due to slow programs not being able to fetch the bytes from the serial port as quickly as they are received there. Since AUX is normally used for things like remote shells, about 2 kilobytes (2048 bytes) should be quite all right. The length of the serial buffer must be divisible by 64. If you enter a length that is not, AUXEdit adjusts the value accordingly. The 'Data bits', 'Parity' and 'Stop bits' parameters are the same like in your favourite terminal program. They are normally set to '8N1'. The 'Speed' specifies the transfer speed in bits/second. Common values used are 19200 or even 38400. Keep in mind that an ordinary 68000 Amiga should merely be used at a maximum speed of 19200 bits/second. Also many multi port serial boards do not support higher transfer rates. As I expected you know this parameter already, too. Select no handshake, 7-wire (RTS/CTS), XOn/XOff or a combination of both. For most applications 'none' will work perfectly. The last setup entry contains the name of the serial device to use. This enables you to run NewAUX with a different device than 'serial.device'. This is extremely important if you own a multi port serial board that is shipped with a custom serial device driver. Enter 'x' to write the altered settings to 's:NewAUX.config' and exit the program or 'q' to leave without saving. 6. Troubleshooting After you have installed NewAUX as described above there are not many things that can cause malfunction. To check the device driver disconnect everything from your serial port(s). After that mount the device using the unit number of one of your serial ports or a value of zero if you do not own a multi port serial board. For example NewAUX 0 AUX: should work for a standard Amiga computer. After that use 'NewShell' to create a shell using the NewAUX device. To cling to the example, type NewShell AUX: If no screen opens it is very difficult to help you. You should then contact me and tell me which hardware you are using and which settings are contained in your 's:NewAUX.config' file. If a screen opens you are quite lucky. In such a case the problem is that the serial device cannot be opened properly when you use NewAUX with your BBS for example. Check your configuration file, especially the handshake option. Sometimes the NewAUX device does not work if the handshake is set to something else than what is used by the software NewAUX has to work with, like e. g. your BBS. If you cannot figure out how to find proper settings for NewAUX, just delete 's:NewAUX.config' and start 'AUXEdit'. 'AUXEdit' will then use its internal standard parameters which normally work quite well. Press 'x' to write them again in your 's:' folder. 7. The next release It will include some additional features: - optimised message handling code (version 1.00 does not accept any keystrokes whilst printing text) - security options that prevent CLI commands from being executed or printed when NewAUX is used for remote shells in BBSs - as many things as possible you want me to include 8. Epilogue If you like this program and you think I deserve more than being mentioned in this .doc file feel free to send any presents like beer or anything else to me. All generous donators will be mentioned in future releases of NewAUX, and there will be lots of future releases. Also if you have any problems (using NewAUX), any suggestions or bug reports you are encouraged to contact me. I will be glad considering your statements in future releases. Contact me via electronic mail at lopatic@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.de or via snail mail: Thomas Lopatic St. Rochus-Str. 22 W-8044 Lohhof Germany I'm looking forward to hearing from you! See you, -Thomas