File Transfer With Kermit From an HP-48

I received the following email
yesterday:

Ed,

I'm trying to connect a HP-48 to a Mac with OS X to transfer data. Any idea's
for applications to accomplish this?

Thanks,

Don

The only application I know of that
is devoted to universal file transfer
across operating systems is something
called Kermit. Kermit has been
around for years. It is offered through
Columbia University in New York City:

The Kermit Project

I use this software myself. It solves a
very common problem in a nice way.
Transferring files across different
platforms is a very common problem.

The HP-48 is a calculator, is this true?
Does it have a physical port of some kind?

Kermit, in my experience, is very good at
transferring files across different kinds
of cabling. For example, I currently use
it to transfer files across a null modem
cable.

Null modem cables are very much out of date,
but Kermit does the job nicely. While I'm
not personally familiar with all the
different kinds of cabling that Kermit
handles, I would imagine the list is
fairly complete.

If it turns out I'm wrong, and that Kermit is
not a good solution, please post below. On
the other hand, if it does turn out to be a
good solution, posting below will allow others
to try your solution to the same problem.

After doing a search . . .

I just stopped writing to do a search
on Google. I searched on the term
hp-48 kermit.

It turns out there is a web page devoted
exclusively to this topic. Here it is:

HP-48 Kermit Hints and Tips

This web page will tell you far more than
I can. I use Kermit in a limited way. I
use it to transfer files between an old
laptop that has Linux on it (but has no
Ethernet card) and a desktop that has
Linux on it. My Kermit experience is
very limited. All I know is that Kermit
works.


Ed Abbott

The Unix dd Command

 
I was asked the following question
via email

What if a file that is an ASCII
character file (CRLF) needs to be
sent to an IBM server that understands
only EBCDIC? How will the CRLF conversion
from ASCII to EBCDIC take place between
Windows and IBM servers? In other words,
what is the command used to convert ASCII
to EBCDIC format?

Under the Unix operating system, the command
that has historically been used to convert
between ASCII and EBCDIC is the dd command:

Here's a Wikipedia article on dd:

dd (Unix)

Of course, the question was for the Windows
Operating System, not the Unix Operating System

I don't know whether or not there is a decent
version of dd for Windows available. It's
such an obvious idea. Maybe there is a dd
for Windows and maybe it is complete enough
to fully implement ASCII and EBCDIC conversions.
I've not looked into this.

Here's another approach: There's is a module under
Perl that does ASCII and EBCDIC conversions.
It is found here:

Convert-EBCDIC

Again, this is not something I've actually tried.
At bare minimum, you would have to install Perl
on your Windows computer to get this to work.

Ed Abbott