ST.DOC

ST.EXE is copyright (c) 1990, Ted A. Campbell 

It may be freely copied as long as a fee is not charged for it, and as 
long as it is used for no commercial purposes.  

Simple Talk (ST) is a very small and simple communications (terminal) 
program for the PC/XT/AT computers.  It was designed principally to allow 
a straight ASCII upload from the PC/XT/AT computers to the ATARI Portfolio, 
since standard communications programs usually filter out non-ASCII 
characters in such uploads.  (The Portfolio needs to receive HEXBIN.COM 
as a text file in order to "bootstrap" the system, and thus absolutely no
codes must be stripped out.)  

Control-E will bring up a menu.  The menu items are as follows: 

	[P] Set Parameters - you can set the COM port (1 or 2), the 
	    baud rate, the parity, the data bits, and the stop bits.  

	[D] Dial a number.  This presumes that you have a Hayes-compatible
	    modem, and will dial a specified number using the ATDT command. 

	[R] Receive ASCII.  This just begins echoing all input to a 
	    logfile.  Note that the logfile is opened in "append" 
	    (non-destructive) mode, so that existing text in the 
	    file will not be destroyed.  

	[S] Send ASCII.  This sends a file exactly as read out the 
	    COM port.  This is what you'll need to use to send HEXBIN.COM
	    and TMXM2.HEX to the Portfolio from your PC/XT/AT.  A dot 
	    will be shown for every sixteen characters sent, and an MSDOS
	    end-of-file marker (Control-Z) will be sent at the end.

	[X] eXit from the program.  You'll be prompted for a Y or N to 
	    be sure.  You can also exit by hitting Control-C at any 
	    point, but don't hit Control-C twice, because the program 
	    will exit rather ungracefully.  

There is no terminal emulation set, but all text to the screen is 
sent out by the BDOS, so that if you have ANSI.SYS or a clone thereof 
installed you should get a reasonable VT100 emulation.  

Ted A. Campbell
GENIE:  T.CAMPBELL1
Internet:  tcamp%numen@dukeac.ac.duke.edu