Technical information

Forterm Serial Solutions
Chapter 11
Forterm
Introduction.____________
FORTRAN77 was the first high-level programming
language, and now, much enhanced, is a mainstay of computing,
especially in science and engineering applications. FORTRAN77
can easily be used to run the serial ports provided by NewCOM,
and with the BIOS access function supplied with Serial Solutions
the full range of serial software functions are available
Forterm is a Microsoft FORTRAN77 version 5 terminal
emulator. It main purpose is to demonstrate the use of
FORTRAN77 to program serial ports, but it is in its own right a
useful tool for working with serial devices.
This chapter contains two main sections. The first and
most important section discusses the way that FORterm uses the
serial port. The second section takes a less detailed look at the
organisation of the whole of Forterm.
Running Forterm.________________
Once the driver and port have been set up the user can
execute Forterm using the command
c>Forterm <definition_file>
where <definition_file> is the optional name of a text file
containing commands for Forterm to read when it starts. These
define the way that Forterm will work, and are detailed in the
chapter "Terminal Emulators".
Once the terminal is running any characters typed at the
keyboard are sent to the serial port, and any characters received
from the serial port are displayed on the screen. At any time the
user can hit a function key, which have the following effects:
F1 Display a help screen
F2 Setup. This is a group of menus which interactively set up
the serial port. At each menu the user must hit one of the
Chapter 11 Page 163