* * * * *
Schlepping bits
It amazes me sometimes what we go through to move bits from one computer to
another.
I wrote my humor column [1] on an old Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer [2] using
VIP Writer [3]. When the time came to put it online I had the distinct
pleasure of copying the files, which involved the following steps:
1. Creating a specialized serial cable to go from my Color Computer, which
used a 4-pin DIN (Deutsches Institut für Normung) [4] plug, to my Amiga
500, which used the more standard DB-25 [5].
2. Load up VIP Writer, and select the “Print” option.
3. Load up a terminal program on the Amiga, open up a capture buffer and
then hold down the space bar to fool VIP Writer on the Color Computer
that indeed, it was talking to a printer. Once the column finished
“printing” I then saved the buffer into a file. I did that for every
column you see.
That was just to get the files off the Color Computer. I still had to get
them to the webserver in question, which, at that time, was my workstation at
FAU (Florida Atlantic University) [6]. That involved one of the following
steps (which I don't recall, since it's been about fourteen years):
1. Dial into the FAU (Florida Atlantic University) modem bank (this was way
back before ubiquitous Internet access like we have now) and connect
through an intermediary system (the dialup modems were hooked into a
terminal server, which didn't talk TCP/IP (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol), but DECNET (Digital Electronic Corporation
NETwork)—the intermediary system talked both DECNET and TCP/IP—this was
way back when there were other networking standards other than TCP/IP)
and then to my workstation, whereupon I had to upload the columns using
the Kermit protocol [7], which was dog slow, but it worked, unlike the
XModem [8], YModem [9] or ZModem [10] protocols.
2. Copy the files to an MS (Microsoft)-DOS (Disk Operating System)
formatted floppy using a special program on the Amiga, which
reprogrammed the floppy hardware (and caused the computer to act very
strangely while doing so), then physically take the disk to FAU, where I
then used a Sun Unix workstation [11] in the Computer Science Department
[12] to copy the files off, and then use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to
get them to my workstation, where I could convert them to HTML
(HyperText Markup Language) and so place them online.
Thankfully, such days are long past us, and the ability to copy data is
indeed easier. I'm working on a project at The Company whereby we need to
extract data from QuickBooks [13]. This involves:
1. A program running on the same computer as QuickBooks that talks to
QuickBooks using COM (Component Object Model), with the data encoded in
qbXML (QuickBooks eXtensible Markup Language).
2. The same program will then package the data into another form of XML
(eXtensible Markup Language) and use SOAP (Simple Object Access
Protocol) to transfer the data to a webserver.
3. The webserver is running a program that can accept the SOAP request,
then extract the qbXML from inside the SOAP request. It then extracts
the data from inside the qbXML and then we can work with the data.
Probably by passing it onto yet another program.
Yup. Nothing like wrapping data into two different XML formats, transferring
it across the network like a webpage, then extracting the data from within
two different XML formats.
Sure is easier than the old days.
[1]
http://www.conman.org/people/spc/writings/murphy/
[2]
http://www.coco3.com/
[3]
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:bmIxEddzVUAJ:www.icepeople.net/coco/words.html+VIP+Writer+Color+Computer&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB-25
[6]
http://www.fau.edu/
[7]
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/kermit.html
[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMODEM
[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YMODEM
[10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMODEM
[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation
[12]
http://www.cse.fau.edu/
[13]
http://quickbooks.intuit.com/
Email author at
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