Coactive Aesthetics CA386-N1, Reference Manual

Desktop Development

DOS Programming

2-5 

2.3.3.2

Using the Serial Disk

To enable the remote serial disk you must run a “server” program on the desktop PC which provides the serial
disk services. This program (

REMSERVE.EXE

 found in the 

UTILS

 directory) should be run from a DOS session

window on the desktop PC. Note that while it is running, the DOS session will be unavailable for other functions.

The arguments to 

REMSERVE.EXE

 are (1) the desktop PC drive to be “exported” as the serial disk, and (2) the

desktop PC COM port to use as the serial disk connection. So for example if you want to export the 

C:

 drive of

the desktop PC and you have COM2 connected to COM2 of the CA386-N1, you would use:

c:> remserv C: /com2

You also must run the program 

REMDISK.EXE

 on the CA386-N1 target. This is a utility supplied pre-installed on

the CA386-N1 which will set up the next available drive (e.g.,

  F:

) as the serial disk. You run 

REMDISK.EXE

from the CA386-N1 DOS prompt (via the terminal program running on the desktop PC).

c:> remdisk

Remote Disk v1.0

Copyright (c) 1990-1994 Datalight, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Installed as Drive F: /COM1 /B115+

Once you have run 

REMSERVE.EXE

 on the desktop PC and 

REMDISK.EXE

 on the CA386-N1 target, the serial

disk will be available. You can access it just as any drive. Note that since the 

DIR

 command computes the size of

the drive, it can be slow over the serial disk. The utility 

LS

 for listing directories is supplied with the CA386-N1

as a faster alternative to 

DIR

 when using remote serial disks.

2.3.4 Development under DOS

For DOS developers, or those who only have a single serial port available, the utilities 

TRANSFER.EXE

 (on the

CA386-N1) and 

COMM.EXE

 (on the desktop PC) can be used to download and upload files between the desktop

and target machines. This scheme is detailed in 

Section 2.2, Quick Start

, and is described below. The basic

steps are:

•

Use 

COMM.EXE

 (run on the desktop PC) as the terminal emulator to communicate with the DOS con-

sole of the CA386-N1.

•

Use 

TRANSFER.EXE

 (run on the CA386-N1) to accept a downloaded file, and save to RAM Disk.

•

Use the 

XMODEM

 upload function of 

COMM.EXE

 (invoked with PgUp) to download the file.

2.3.4.1

COMM.EXE

COMM.EXE

 is a general DOS communications utility supplied on the CA386-N1 Companion Diskette. It can be

used as a terminal program to communicate with the CA386-N1 DOS console, and to upload and download files
to the board. For the full set of commands and functions supported by 

COMM.EXE

, start the program, and type

“F1” to get the help screen. For Windows users, the program 

TERMINAL.EXE

 provides similar functionality.