Uploading text files with serial extender

Keywords:     pPutBinary

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Question:

I love your new serial extender for Winbatch, but I don't understand why you haven't made it easier to squirt a plain text file out the serial port without using an error-correcting protocol (It would be nice, though not essential, if I could construct a progress indicator, too). I work for a newspaper where our reporters send dozens of text files into our main frame every day from their laptops. I'd love to write a stand-alone application in Winbatch to automate the process, but I just can't find a way. Can you help?

Answer:

Well...mostly it's not done beause it does not work. But for a pure squirt, ignoring line noise and a host of errorprone overrun conditions....

1. Establish a comlink and get a port handle.

2. Squirt a file.

   fn="C:\filname.of.file.to.squirt"
   fs=Filesize(fn)
   binbuf=BinaryAlloc(fs)
   BinaryRead(binbuf,fn)
   binaddr=IntControl(42,binbuf,0,0,0)
   pPutBinary(port,binaddr,fs)
   BinaryFree(binbuf)
   

That will just dump the file out the serial port. I recommend some kind of error correction protocol on both sizes. Either XMODEM or ZMODEM or something. (Which does have a progress indicator) or at least checksum the binary buffer before sending it.

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Article ID:   W12580

Filename:   Uploading Text Files using Serial Extender.txt