I am using qtalk as a terminal emulator to interface the calibration firmware of a DSP controlled, radio frequency modem. After selecting serial download, the DSP goes into receive mode, waiting for a S-record file to be downloaded to it. At this point, using the CtrlA to get qtalk’s attention, I can use the ‘w’ command to download the S-record file.
Sometimes, the download is aborted because the DSP gets overrun even though the baud rate is only 2400. Is there any way I can get qtalk to insert delays (of approx 1 second) after each line of the file it is sending ? This is standard in Hyperterminal, ProComm, and other terminal emulators. They even allow inter character delays to be specified.
No, it’s the program for setting up the operating parameters for the RF modem that doesn’t support flow control when loading the S-Record file serially. This is all done ‘off-line’ to setup the RF modem.
Oh, I get it. I’ve never seen that sort of option. I think on qnx4 there was some stuff for setting inter character delays but that seems to be gone. Maybe you can write your own transfer protocol that reads lines from the file, writes them to the modem and pauses between newlines. The qcp command will show you how the parameters are passed in.
I don’t quite follow your recommendation. Are you saying that with qtalk already connected to the remote system I can send qtalk lines to send to the other system ? If that’s true, how can I sync the start of the other program to the menu selection via qtalk that puts the other system in ‘receive an S-record download’ mode ?
I don’t know your system or if this will work for you, but normally a qtalk transfer is done like this (using qcp for example):
Start qtalk
Connect and login to remote system
On the remote system at the prompt type “qcp re”
On the local side from within qtalk type Ctrl-A, then S to send the file
Type the name of the file to send (“myfile”) and enter
At this point the qtalk will invoke “qcp se myfile” on the local side to send myfile to the remote side.
So what I’m suggesting is you write a simple program to read your S-Rec input file one line at a time, write the
line to the modem, delay for the required time period, and repeat until all records are sent. If your program
is called “txsrec” then it might work something like this.
Start qtalk as “qtalk -o other_se=txsrec -t other”
Connect and login to remote system
Put the remote system into the mode to receive S-Record downloads
On the local side from within qtalk type Ctrl-A, then S to send the file
Type the name of the file to send (“myfile”) and enter
At this point it should invoke your program as “txsrec se myfile” which can then send myfile
A few details may be missing but it seems this should work. txsrec should be pretty simple to write.
That’s great ! Thanks for the detailed explanation. This would give me a lot more control over what’s going on. I could even break the transfer if the other end stops echoing back the lines, or if what it echoes doesn’t match what was sent.