13 July 1994 FROM: Tony Appelget 12715 27 Place Plymouth MN 55441-2727 TO: Kermit Development & Distribution Columbia University Academic Information Systems 612 West 115 Street New York NY 10025 Christine Gianone, Frank da Cruz, et al Enclosed are copies of SPL and C HP3000 Kermit. Not much has changed in them except for the change in default start-of-packet character. Our in-house standard has been 02 to accomodate some IBM box that could not handle 01. Regretably, I left the 02 in the versions that got distributed and it has caused grief to new users from border to border and beyond. With these fresh copies, I will undoubtedly be ending my support of HP3000 Kermit. After 26 years, I will be leaving General Mills in a month. I may even retire! I wish I had the opportunity to get PC version 3.13 up and also to get HP3000 Kermit up to attri- butes, 9k packets, lurching windows, and all the other new goodies. It has been fun working on Kermit for the last 9 years and watching it grow from a pokey academic product into a mature, speedy, industrial product. I'm going to miss my frog. Yours truly Tony Appelget Sr Technical Specialist ------------------------------ 16 Oct 1991 FROM: Tony Appelget General Mills, Inc PO Box 1113 Minneapolis, MN 55440-1113 612-540-7703 TO: Kermit Distribution Columbia Center for Computing Studies 612 West 115 Street New York, NY 10025 SUBJ: HP3000 Kermit Apparently my contribution of HP3000 Kermit has hit the streets. I am getting phone calls, mostly because sites do not have current SPL compilers. Since I first sent you my updated version of HP3000 Kermit, we have obtained HP Spectrum machines. Although Kermit did not fall flat on its face, problems arose and I fixed them. It is time for me to send you an update. Enclosed on this disk are the following: This letter. My HP3000 Kermit source. My HP3000 Kermit object. The object file is straight classic HP3000 code, ready to run. It has not been BOOed or otherwise been made eye- readable. I assume that you have the facilities to readily do that conversion if you choose. I have run the classic HP3000 code through HP's OCTCOMP processor and the resulting code file seems to be well-behaved on a Spectrum machine. (Signed) Tony Appelget ------------------------------ 15 June 1990 Tony Appelget General Mills, Inc P.O. Box 1113 Minneapolis, MN 55441-1113 Christine M. Gianone, Manager Kermit Development and Distribution Columbia University Center for Computing Activities 612 West 115 Street New York, NY 10025 The HP3000 SPL Kermit seems to be badly neglected. The listing in "Kermit News number 4" shows your most recent version to be v1.1 dated 85/06/24. I am enclosing what I am assuming to be a much more modern version. It is the product of a lot of hours put into the v1.0 version over the past five or six years and works very well here. All my changes are listed in comments at the beginning of the program. A few of the big changes are: Added a HELP function Implementated a very versatile command name abbreviation scheme Implemented 3-byte checksums in addition to the old standard one-byte checksums Implemented long packets with a maximum of 2000 bytes. Decreasing packet size in response to packet errors is not implemented This Kermit sets a JCW, KRMJCWnn, where nn is the comm ldev, to indicate what he is doing or how an xfer was completed. Usefull in a batch or IPC environment Cleaned up a plethora of small bugs At the insistance of our security types, a file validation scheme was built into the program. No one uses it. Leaving it in place will cause no harm. It should be removable without too much trouble The version number, 2.7, that I have stuck on the program is totally arbitrary as far as I am concerned. If my enclosed Kermit meets your standards for distibution, it would be a feather in my cap for you to do so. (signed) Tony Appelget K0DCF/AFA3AO/AFF3MN ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 4 Jun 85 08:29:49 edt From: Steve Archer To: sy.fdc@cu20b Subject: New HP-3000 SPL Kermit Here is a new version of HP-3000 Kermit in SPL, version 1.1, to replace version 1.0 originally from Ed Eldridge, Polaris Inc. (POLARIS@USC-ISI). It adds the capability to show parameters, changes the "serve" command to "server". Help messages have been added, and some short-form commands (for example "C" for "CONNECT"). Also added parity, a FINISH command, and a very primitive connect mode. steve archer (716) 477-1005 Date: 16 Oct 1984 12:24-EDT Subject: KERMIT for HP 3000 From: POLARIS@USC-ISI.ARPA To: CC.FDC@COLUMBIA-20.ARPA This is to announce a new KERMIT version for the HP 3000. It is written in SPL specifically for an HP 3000 running MPE. Features include: o Binary and text transmission/reception o Server mode o 8th-bit prefixing o Repeat count prefixing o Numerous commands for control of MPE file system parameters Some Questions and answers: What is SPL ? SPL stands for Systems Programming Language. It's the moral equivalent of assembly language on the HP 3000 (there is no assembler). Since SPL is not included when you purchase a 3000, ALL sites don't have it (extra cost option from HP). On the other hand, SPL is practically a requirement for serious development on the 3000. It may be the most commonly available language (other than COBOL) in the HP 3000 community. Why not modify the Software Toolworks version ? When I started work on this version (6 - 8 months ago), the Software Toolworks version was not available. You may recall some conversations with Mike Seyfrit about it (I don't know who Mike talked to or what was said and he's no longer with the company). When we got a copy of the ST version, I stopped work on this one. Why re-invent the wheel? I didn't have a PC to test it with anyway. The ST version is a fine product and the only real limitation was the inability to handle binary files. This was due to the bizarre way that MPE (the HP 3000 operating system) stores files, its (MPE) inability to transfer 8 bit characters, and the fact that MS DOS KERMIT did not support 8 bit quoting. Since then, things have changed: MS DOS KERMIT does 8 bit quoting, I have a PC to test with and we still need binary file transfer. I found myself with a RATFOR KERMIT that worked and an SPL KERMIT that almost worked. I am not too familiar with RATFOR but I am very familiar with SPL. RATFOR (Software Toolworks flavor) is somewhat rare on the 3000. SPL is quite common. The choice was obvious. Other considerations: Another distribution option is the INTEREX (HP international users group) Contributed Software Library. I would like to make KERMIT and the associated manuals/documentation available to them. Please let me know if this is OK with you. Finally, thanks to Columbia University for providing KERMIT to us in the first place. It's a useful tool and I've had a lot of fun working with it. - Ed Eldridge Polaris, Inc. 1400 Wilson Blvd. suite 1100 Arlington, Virginia 22209 (703) 527-7333 ------------------------------