NOTE: This file applies to previous (2.27 or 2.28) releases of the program.
It's not certain to what degreee it's valid for 2.29.


This note describes the capabilities of MS-DOS MSKermit as implemented for
the NEC Advanced Personal Computer (APC).  The APC system dependent portion of
the code (both port and terminal handlers) resides in the file MSXAPC.ASM.
This is the only module required in addition to those that all implementations
need.

MSKermit on the APC supports both the standard serial port (as port 1) and
the optional (H14) add-on serial port (as port 2).  Port selection is
performed using the SET PORT command.  Any baud rate up to 38400 is legal
although 38400 has never been tested and may not work well.  The port is
always configured as 8 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit.  Any necessary
parity is supplied by Kermit.

The interrupt vector used by the optional port is jumper-selectable.  Kermit
is set up to use IR8 by default, so if another vector is required the
MSXAPC.ASM file must be altered and reassembled.  The changes are well
commented, and only amount to changing the value of a conditional.

Terminal mode support on the APC is relatively primitive.  The only provisions
that have been made for emulation are in the operating system firmware, which
supports a limited subset of both VT100/ANSI and ADM-3A commands.

Two pages of screen memory and rollback are also provided by the firmware.
Control-uparrow scrolls back one line, while control-downarrow scrolls forward
a line.

Screen printing is performed by the CRTDUMP resident extension to MS-DOS
using the control-print command.  The print (or control-P) key alone causes
Kermit to toggle echoing of the screen display to the printer.

Key redefinition is provided, but only for the keyboard keys.  The function
keys must be defined using the system's KEY program.  There is no direct
access to the keyboard's scan codes on the APC, so instead each key is
redefined by its ASCII value, limiting the usefulness of this function.

The default escape character is control-].  Bugs in the firmware prevent
this control sequence from being returned to the program, however, so it
is necessary to instead use the left arrow key which sends the control-]
code.  Another alternative is to redefine the escape character in your
MSKERMIT.INI initialization file.


Despite these limitations, MSKermit for the APC is being released so that
the benefits of its file transfer capability are available to APC MS-DOS
users.  It is to be hoped that these users will take it on themselves to
enhance the capabilities.