I would like to slap my Psion 3a ( :shock: ) running a VT100 terminal emulator to a 16F872 (ok, I would be using a Max232 with the PIC to do the serial stuff). What I have in mind is to be able to check and change variables in my program from the Psion. To do so, I thought on creating a kind of parser in the code in the PIC to handle the commands: for instance, if I typed "get A" and pressed return, the output would be something like

A = 42
OK>

AFAIK, one way (conceptually speaking since I do not know if it would fly in PIC/BASIC) to achieve that is to create a buffer to hold X characters and read the last X characters comming off the serial port up to a carriage return (or whatever is put out when you hit the enter key) and then start looking for the right patterns). Is that the best way to do this in this PIC? Would it be a better way to do so? Has any of you done something similar and could show me some pointers?

Also, I was planning on doing that in PIC/BASIC as opposite to assembly because the last time I used assembly was in a ZX80. ops: Would it be a bad idea to use BASIC?

I have not really used a VT100 terminal for my serial comunications. I normally just do a VB program that controls the Serial Port and shows me what is happening.

I am going to suppose then that a VT100 terminal emulator sends everything you type serially when a enter is pressed.

PICBASIC PRO doesn't have the ability to handle strings. So to type "get A" is not the best idea....... a good idea is to create your own protocol..... can you send ESC (ASCII 27d)? You could make ESC + 1 be the "GET" comand so that whatever comes after ESC + 1 is the letter to get. (By the way the letter "A" is ASCII 65d or 41 hex, was that what you meant?)

So the program in the PIC would be something along the lines

Code:

SERIAL-IN Pin, baudrate, WAIT for ESC, VAR1, VAR2
IF VAR1=1 the  GET ASCII value for VAR2

in PICBASIC would be along the terms of:

Code:

COMMAND var byte
Letter va Byte

Loop:
Serin Pin#,BaudRate, [27], COMMAND,Letter  'Waits for ESC (ASCII 27)
Select Case COMMAND

Case "1"
  Serout Pin#, BaudRate, [Letter, "=", #Letter, "d" 10, 13]
Case else
  Serout Pin#, BaudRate, ["Unknown Command", 10, 13]
end select

goto Loop

So if you were to send serially a ESC + 1 + A (ASCII 27d, 49d, 65d) you will receive serially...

A= 65d

Since A is ASCII 65 decimal

i hope it gives you some ideas

Ivancho