communicating with DOS boxes

[Fred Rump]

In article <1597 at fallst.UUCP> tkevans at fallst.UUCP (Tim Evans) writes:
>In article <876 at cdin-1.UUCP>, fred at cdin-1.UUCP (Fred Rump) writes:
>>
>> How can we do the same from Xenix boxes without purchasing TERM or some other
>> commercial package? This has to be cheap.
>>
>Get Emmet Grey's Pro-comm lookalike 'pcomm' from your local comp.sources.unix
>archive.

Thankyou all for the many responses in mail and here. But ...


I think it may not have been clear.

We have no control over what software sits on various DOS machines.  They
belong to a variety of companies that publish weekly bulletins.  They
typically
'give' a computer to their customers were all they do is type the bulletin
data into the system and use a menu option to send it along.

In the process neither party seems to know anything about communications.  But
once they have it working - somehow, they tend not to want to rock the boat
and mess with it.

It so happens that we have customers who use Xenix/Unix boxes to run our
software.  These people do not want another computer (even if it is free) to
simply transmit their bulletin data to the printing house.  They know they use
communications with us daily for e-mail and news and wonder why they can't
simply do the same with their supplier of bulletins.  We try to tell them that
we need to know a little about the 'other' box or software.  Some of those
people are reluctant to even talk to us because they think they have a hold on
the communications market for bulletins and don't want any secrets out.

Yes, this is the real world.

We have some of those folks using mci mail as a collection point.  There we
have no problem for our customers.  We simply provided a menu option that uses
a script to call mci and send a file.  It works fine.

Then we've tried VP/ix for some of the vendor supplied DOS communications
software.  Most of this stuff came form in-house development and is not very
well behaved.  But some programs do work.

The thing is we want to use Xenix and make things as easy as anything we do.
But we can't simply say 'here use this kermit program'.  These people have
their own customer base and kermit would be an unknown to them and other
callers.

I just think there has to be a way to get around all these different programs
doing their thing just to receive files.

Is my problem a little clearer now?

PS These boxes are all over the country in many to many scenarios.

Fred


-- 
Fred Rump              | UUCP:  {uunet bpa dsinc}!cdin-1!fred
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