[Please note: this text was written in 1990, and describes the version
of P3C.EXE that was current then.  More recent versions have improved
serial I/O.  de KB5MU]


Howdy:

I am about to get on my soapbox, so put on your asbestos suit.  I have
never been more disgusted with programs than I am with the state of
AO-13 telemetry capture programs.  The P3C.exe is an outstanding display
program but does a terrible job of handling serial IO.  Since it does
(BARF RETCH) polled IO, it cannot be used on an XT running (say) KCT
and ORBITDRV (or QuikTSR which is my version of Orbitdrv) which is what
I like to use for running the antennas/radios (at $300, it was cheap and
got the stuff off my development machines).  At the same time, I got
disgusted using the 1200 bps needed to run the data out of the DSP machine
to use these programs.  I put this intermediate code together so that:
(1)  All serial IO is done using an interrupt driven receiver.
(2)  I can use 9600 bps on the serial line from the DSP box (or the PSK-1
     with a slight modification to the code there)
(3)  It can be the basis of a much nicer AO13 display code since it is
     written in a real computer language and not pascal or basic.  All
     return flames will be diverted to /dev/NULL (for you non Unix types,
     that means I will ship them automagically to the round file).
There are three inputs:
The filename:  ALL frames are stored to disk.  It will truncate your
name at 8 characters and put .dat on the end of it in order that this
file will be recognized by P3C automatically.

After the capture file is open, etc:
Q quits, restores interrupts to off and returns break to control-C
S synchronizes you with the 512 byte block boundary.  This allows
you to use the PSK-1, which does not do sync detect on the DCD, etc.
THIS IS NOT A FULL FLEDGED DISPLAY PROGRAM.  Source is included. 73 Bob
