Programs and documentation Copyright(c)1985, OMNI Information Resources, Inc. All rights reserved Version 1.0 SOME THINGS YOU MUST KNOW BEFORE USING PCXFER PCXFER is protected by copyright and has not been donated to the public domain. It is user-supported software, which means that the copyright owner, OMNI Information Resources, Inc., grants individuals a limited license to use and make a single backup copy of the programs and associated documentation, provided that such use is for personal and not commercial purposes. Commercial use, defined as use by corporations, partnerships, proprietorships, or within other for-profit entities is expressly prohibited prior to registration and payment as specified below. Individuals who evaluate this program and intend to use it are encouraged to support it with a suggested payment of $30 to OMNI Information Resources, Inc., P. O. Box 1996, Wilmington, DE 19899. Any payment of $30 or more ensures notification of upgrades, if any, for one calendar year from the date of registration, and the opportunity to receive such upgrades at nominal cost, which in no event will exceed $10 to cover reproduction, mailing and other costs. Commercial users, which are defined above, are granted a limited license to use this software FOR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY. Commercial users, upon payment of $50 for the first copy and $20 for each additional copy made of the program and/or documentation, will be provided original, registered copies of the programs and documentation, and will receive the consideration stated above, should revisions become available within one year of registration. Use of the program by business entities without registration is a violation of the copyright and the proprietary nature of the software. OMNI can also tailor PCXFER to specific business needs. Resale of PCXFER and related files and programs is expressly prohibited, even when such sale is for nominal cost, such as "disk fees", "postage and handling", or as part of a library of public domain, free, user-supported, or other software. ANY user is granted permission to distribute the software and documentation to others for evaluation, provided that all files, including this one, are included in the distribution, that no changes whatsoever are made to the programs, including this text and all copyright notices contained in the software and documentation, and that those individuals agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. The programs and documentation are provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. You should always assure against the loss of data by making and protecting backup copies of any files to be transferred. In no event will OMNI be responsible to any user for any damages, including any lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of use of or inability to use PCXFER and all programs associated with it, even if OMNI has been advised of the possibility of such damages by you or any other party. Your use of this program shall constitute agreement to these terms. PCXFER INSTALLATION On this disk, you'll find PCXFER.DOC (this file), PCXFER.EXE, INSTALL.PCX, and SETUP.XFR. PCXFER is the compiled code which can be called directly from DOS. REName it if you wish. INSTALL is an ASCII Basic file which will reside on your portable (about 1K in length). SETUP is your "permanent", but easily changed, system setup file, which can be used to set screen colors, communications ports and disk drives. First step is to copy *.* to a formatted system disk. Next, connect the PC and the portable, following the manufacturer's instructions. This usually means connecting the serial ports using a null modem cable or adapter. Type 'PCXFER' on the PC and, for now, select B (file transfer). Ignore any color problems. They're easily fixed later. Select (D)ownload. (Note: "Upload" and "Download" as used in PCXFER always consider the PC as the host and the portable as the remote. An upload is a transfer of a file from the portable; a download is a transfer from the PC. As a rule of thumb, the PC program should always be initiated before bringing up the companion program on your portable.) If the drive and the port shown are the right ones for your PC, all is well. If not, follow the prompts to change as necessary. E(X)it the setup utility (if you used it). Hit 'Z' to begin the transfer. Direction is 'D'. If your file will normally be on a drive other than A:, you should select (A) -- full system setup from the menu after completing the installation. A: is the default drive, and changing it from (C) on the menu is only temporary. Please note: in the following paragraphs, information enclosed in brackets -- { and } -- is specific to the Tandy Model 100. For other portables, follow the instructions that came with your computer for ASCII file transfers. Parameters are: 7 bit words, even parity, 1 stop bit, 9600 baud, XON/XOFF (if available) enabled. Other available parameters don't matter. {Go to 'TEXT' on the 100; name the 'File to edit' as 'PCXFER.DO' , and hit F2 (for the last time!). Respond COM:87E1E to the 'Load from:' prompt. The portable will appear to freeze.} Ignore the instructions on the PC and hit on the PC. You should see a list of files that includes INSTALL.PCX. Type in INSTALL.PCX , using ALL capital letters or all lower case. When the transfer is complete, select the 'end' option on the PC. (INSTALL.PCX will not work properly if it is renamed, and that name should not be used for any other file.) {On the portable, hit F8. Select BASIC from the menu. Type 'LOAD "PCXFER.DO."' . At the 'OK' prompt, type 'SAVE"PCXFER.BA"' . At the next OK prompt, hit F8 and you're in business.} OPERATION The instructions above were typical of computer file transfers, but, from now on, all you'll have to do is follow a couple of menus and enter a few keystrokes for fast, accurate file transfers. PCXFER is designed only for the transfer of text files. If you want to move Basic programs back and forth, save them as text files on the portable (the ".DO" extension or equivalent), or with the ",A" option on the PC. Similarly, text documents prepared on a PC word processor should be save as "DOS" files or run through the word processor's utility that converts formatted files to "standard" files. No harm will be done if this step is not taken, but you'll probably find some unexpected control (^) characters in the portable file, and may have to do a little reformatting. No text should be lost, however. A FEW NOTES ON HOW PCXFER WORKS The PC program was written in Basic and compiled using IBM's BASCOM 1.0. It is permanently set to 9600 baud, and is fully capable of working at that speed -- the fastest available in PC-DOS and MS-DOS through version 3.1. The actual rate will be somewhat slower for downloads because PCXFER waits for acknowledgement from the portable that each block of text (128 characters) has been received and written to a file. This extra step is necessary to assure that the transfer is accurate. It could have been speeded up from it's already fast rate (about 20,000 characters per minute), but not without setting aside memory on the portable, or complicating the transfer process. In the upload direction, the rate is even faster, since PCXFER has a built-in 10K buffer to catch any overflow. PCXFER should work on any IBM computer or clone using PC-DOS or MS-DOS version 1.0 or later. It contains no machine-specific routines that are frequently the cause of incompatibility problems. If your portable is not a Model 100, PCXFER should work with some minor adjustments to the PCXFER.BA file. You may make these changes for your own use, but may not distribute the program with them without prior permission. You should be able to convert the short portable program by adjusting the LOCATE or PRINT@ statements to suit your machine. You may also need to change the statement that opens the COM file -- 'C="COM:87E1E"'. Use the parameters above with XON/XOFF (if available) enabled. Howard J. Benner OMNI Information Resources, Inc. P. O. Box 1996 Wilmington, DE 19899 CIS 70235,1337 12/9/85