An alternative to HyperTerminal?

[Steve Anderson]

We all know and love(?) Microsoft Hyper Terminal, but it does have limitations.

In this case I wish to send a binary file out of a COM port totally intact without having to use any form of protocol like Zmodem etc. i.e. simply grab the file and spit it out of the COM port as it is. No 'translation', no padding to some boundary, all values legal (0x00 to 0xFF), no handshaking or error checking required. Not even parity checking...but I'll just ignore that if present.

That is, if the file is 3652 bytes long I want 3652 bytes to come out of the COM port unaltered. No headers/trailers.

Any suggestions chaps? To run on Win XP. Speed? Any standard value really, anything from 9.6k up to 115k, ultimate speed is not essential. Files are quite small, around 40kB max.

Cheers,

Steve A.

[gary]

Lots and lots of ways - this is probably the absolutely most basic way:

Since you mention Microsoft Hyper Terminal this is under windows right?
(same principle under Linux - just different commands).

When you say "without having to use any form of protocol like Zmodem etc" I assume you mean over and above the RS232 protocol, in which case it is just a matter of configuring the com port correctly.

Open the command prompt:

type:

mode com1:baud=9600 (or whatever) parity=n xon=off DTR=off RTS=off

copy <your_binary_file_name> com1 (without the <>)

That's all there is to it if I remember rightly (you may not need to set all those values - just type mode com1 to see what it's current status is first and just change the settings you need to).

If you need something more complicated or user friendly there are simple "com" programmes available - I could even write you a little programme very quickly if you need it.

BTW hyperterminal should also be able to do it if you configure it correctly but I don't have it here on Vista to try, but I seem to recall using it for a similar purpose many moons ago.

[Steve Anderson]

Gary, thanks a lot for that. We (or at least I) forget about the DOS-box nowadays. Yep, that'll do the job nicely and quickly, nothing fancy needed at all...

It is for Windoze XP BTW.

Steve A.

Just tried it, can't recall how to set data bits to 8, not the default 7.

OK, forget it, done it...thanks again...

Also stopped time-outs (there is no echo-back or any sort of ACK)...final version...with 2 stop bits (deliberate)...

mode com1:baud=9600 parity=n xon=off DTR=off RTS=off data=8 stop=2 to=off

Steve A.

[gary]

aah yes meant to mention the data bits=8, anyway I knew that you'd suss out anything that was missing - once you see the output of mode it's reasonably obvious, or at least you know what to look up.