Terminal Application

At 3:22 AM -0800 3/5/08, John Ferman wrote:
>Do any readers here know of a Terminal application that can emulate
>Kermit or Xmodem. I have the task of figuring a way to pass a file
>into a Hewlett-Packard handheld calculator over USB. Remember the old
>ADB port - is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo; I have never seen one
>here in Minnesota. We are down to just one store that carries some Mac
>stuff, so we are 'dry gulch' Mac country, I guess.


Check out ZTerm.

<http://homepage.mac.com/dalverson/zterm/>

Hasn't been updated in a while but should do the job.


Ken P.

> is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo; I have never seen one
>here in Minnesota.

Yep. The iMate-
<http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imate>

This is an old piece of hardware, though, and note this requirement
listed on Griffin's page:
"Mac OS 10.3.9 or older".

Greg Sigman

You can find binaries for C-Kermit off this link:

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ck80.html#binaries

You'll need to read the section this link points to before going to the
actual binaries page so you can understand the naming convention of the
files (this is old-school stuff, but its there).

I only found one, for-purchase, terminal program for MacOS X that did Xmodem
- you can google for +terminal +xmodem +macintosh to find it.

My father and I had old HP calculators, but that was so long ago I can't
help further with your task.

Good luck and have fun! - Bob

At 3:22 AM -0800 3/5/08, John Ferman wrote:
>Do any readers here know of a Terminal application that can emulate
>Kermit or Xmodem. I have the task of figuring a way to pass a file
>into a Hewlett-Packard handheld calculator over USB. Remember the old
>ADB port - is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo; I have never seen one
>here in Minnesota. We are down to just one store that carries some Mac
>stuff, so we are 'dry gulch' Mac country, I guess.
>
        (I also sent this to David P. Alverson the author of ZTerm, who
might want to see <<a href="/webx?50@@.3cbeed91">jwferman, "Terminal Application" #, 5 Mar 2008 3:22 am</a>> for this
entire thread.)

        John,

        What I think you want is something like ZTerm. I remember it well
from days of yore... I do not know how well it works with Mac OS X 10.4 or
later, or on Intel, but it seemed to work well with early version of Mac OS
X, and it was great. There are probably many UNIX/Linux derived
possibilities, but ZTerm is well worth checking out.

        ZTerm's web page says: "OSX has Terminal.app - why do I need ZTerm?
Terminal.app and ZTerm both have terminal emulation capability, but
Terminal.app talks only to other programs, whereas ZTerm talks only to
serial ports, and other drivers that identify themselves as serial ports.
You could run a program like tip in Terminal.app, but it would be somewhat
awkward compared to ZTerm."

<http://homepage.mac.com/dalverson/zterm/>


--
* Johann Beda - contact link: <http://xri.net/=j-beda> *
* Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - <http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

On Wed, 5 Mar 2008, John Ferman wrote:

> Do any readers here know of a Terminal application that can emulate
> Kermit or Xmodem. I have the task of figuring a way to pass a file
> into a Hewlett-Packard handheld calculator over USB.

A search of the Fink repository mentions:

  ckermit Kermit Transfer Program/Swis Army Knife
  gkermit Simple, Portable, Free File Transfer Software

Searching for those on Google brings up useful Columbia & Debian hits:

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/gkermit.html
  http://packages.debian.org/sarge/gkermit

  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ck80.html
  http://packages.debian.org/sarge/ckermit

Plus of course general Wikipedia and a better Columbia page:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_%28protocol%29
  http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/

In short, it looks like c-kermit may be the way to go, as it appears to
have more functionality, and the last g-kermit update was in 1999.

> Remember the old ADB port - is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo

Google is a wonderful thing. The Griffin iMate is at the front of the
search results when searching for "USB/ADB adapter":

  http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imate

The main catch seems to be that it only supports 10.3.9 or older, so if
you're running Tiger or Leopard, it looks like it won't work.

Belkin also lists one, but it only mentions Mac OS 8.6, which to me
implies, unhelpfully, that it'll either Just Work, or it won't do
anything at all:

  http://www.belkin.com/support/product/?pid=F5U118-UNV

Their PDF manual for it was last updated in 2000, predating OSX, but I
did find another page where someone claimed to have it working on
Jaguar, so maybe it would be okay.

--
Chris Devers

>Remember the old
>ADB port - is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo; I have never seen one
>here in Minnesota.

The iMate from Griffin did that:

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imate

We used them back in the day to adapt ADB Macs to USB KVM switches. I
still use one at home to adapt my NeXT ADB mouse to my G4 powerbook.


--chuck

I'm pretty sure all HP calculators are going to communicate via
serial, not ADB. What you want for the hardware is a usb to serial
converter, not ADB. They are much easier to find.

>> Remember the old ADB port - is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo

John queried...

>Do any readers here know of a Terminal application
>that can emulate Kermit or Xmodem. I have the task of
>figuring a way to pass a file into a Hewlett-Packard handheld
>calculator over USB. Remember the old ADB port - is there
>a USB/ADB adapter gizmo; I have never seen one
>here in Minnesota. We are down to just one store that carries
>some Mac stuff, so we are 'dry gulch' Mac country, I guess.

Ah, a trip down Memory Lane...

first, one answer to the terminal emulation:
Ericom makes
http://www.ericom.com/ptimac.asp

It has a 30 day trial period and supports Kermit. Click on the
full specs link for an impressive list.

Another possibility may be the Mac version of NCSA Telnet
but I'm unable to view the documentation at my present
workstation...

http://www.uh.edu/infotech/php/template.php?download_id=34

I wonder if Dr Bot might have the hardware you need...

www.drbot.com/

Ah, yes. The days of terminal access to mainframe and mini-
computers on a Mac and connections to electronic bulletin
board systems (BBSs). I used to use Red Ryder/White Knight,
NCSA Telnet and TN3270 applications quite a bit. Downloaded
files from mainframes using Kermit using White Knight.

I hadn't had to use those sort of programs for quite
a while.

Hank

> http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imate
>
>The main catch seems to be that it only supports 10.3.9 or older, so if
>you're running Tiger or Leopard, it looks like it won't work.

That is not true, as I'm running 10.4.11 on my PowerBook and look!...
I've got an iMate attached to a NeXT ADB mouse as we speak. Working
just fine thanks.


--

Chuck Goolsbee

On 5-Mar-2008, at 04:22, John Ferman wrote:

> Do any readers here know of a Terminal application that can emulate
> Kermit or Xmodem.

Zterm

> I have the task of figuring a way to pass a file
> into a Hewlett-Packard handheld calculator over USB. Remember the old
> ADB port - is there a USB/ADB adapter gizmo; I have never seen one
> here in Minnesota. We are down to just one store that carries some Mac
> stuff, so we are 'dry gulch' Mac country, I guess.

Keyspan made a USB/ADB connector at one point, I think. But that was
a long long LONG time ago. Are you sure the HP doesn't have a mini
serial port? They look a lot like ADB ports.

I have a hp48gx and I used to use ckermit to get files onto (and off) my calculator. At the time I was running linux but this method will work just fine for OSX as it is a unix under the hood.

You don't mention what kind of calculator you have. This is very important. Some real old HP calculators used some funny hp serial protocol (I forget what it was called) to communicate with devices and computers. The hp48 (s,sx,g,gx) and the hp49 series uses rs232 to communicate with the computer. With the newest hp graphing caculators I believe one uses rs232 and one uses a usb cable.

If the caculator you have is a hp48 (s,sx,g,gx) or a hp49 then you will need a USB to serial converter. Also you will need a cable to go from the USB to serial converter to the calculator. You can buy these or you can make them if you don't already have one. I made my cable for my hp48 (I was cheap) out of an old mouse cord (prewired db9 connector) and the plug for a motor from a defunct floppy drive. The pinout I needed was either in the hp48 manual or on the web, I forget which.

A good place to start looking for information on hp caclulators is "hpcacl.org".

-- Grurp