History

Virgil Dupras 2fa88176c0 VE: don't emit chars higher than 0x7f Uninitialized blocks often contains garbage, and emitting it on the TRS-80 4P results in serious visual glitches.		2020-12-22 18:34:03 -05:00
..
.gitignore	VE: don't emit chars higher than 0x7f	2020-12-22 18:34:03 -05:00
blkdown.c	tools: add "blkdown" tool	2020-12-21 17:02:36 -05:00
blkpack.c	Transform "blk/" folders into "blk.fs" text files	2020-11-14 18:34:15 -05:00
blkunpack.c	tools/blkunpack: add "upto" argument	2020-12-21 17:02:36 -05:00
blkup.c	tools/blkup: add shortcut for zero blocks	2020-12-17 20:19:12 -05:00
common.c	tools/upload: send data as string hex to avoid control characters	2020-12-16 16:52:54 -05:00
common.h	Add arduinouno/at28 recipe	2020-07-22 17:26:06 -04:00
exec.c	tools/exec: fix segfault	2020-11-17 17:02:10 -05:00
Makefile	tools: add "blkdown" tool	2020-12-21 17:02:36 -05:00
memdump.c	tools: improve usability on OpenBSD	2020-07-02 11:36:53 -04:00
pingpong.c	Add arduinouno/at28 recipe	2020-07-22 17:26:06 -04:00
README.md	tools: improve stty-related advices in README	2020-08-02 16:21:31 -04:00
ttysafe.c
upload.c	tools/upload: send data as string hex to avoid control characters	2020-12-16 16:52:54 -05:00

README.md

Tools

This folder contains tools to communicate to Collapse OS machines from a modern environment or to manipulate a blkfs.

Communication tools all take a device path as a first argument. That device is the serial device that connects you to your machine. It's often a USB-to-TTL dongle. When - is specified, stdin is used as the device.

Note that for these tools to work well, you need the serial device to be properly set up, TTY-wise. You'll probably want to do that with stty. The tool itself takes care of setting the regular stuff (cs8, -parenb, etc), but you need to set the speed. Here's an example working on OpenBSD:

$ ( stty 115200 raw ; sleep 2 ; ./upload - a000 os.bin ) <> /dev/cuaU0

To be honest, I'm having a bit of troubles making these tools work as well on OpenBSD as they do in Linux. But it does work. Here are some advices:

Use cuaXX instead of ttyXX.
Run cu -l /dev/cuaXX before running your tool and run a dummy command to make sure that the output buffer is flushed.
Use the "raw" option to avoid TTY-processing options to mess with data.
If you experience random failures in your command, try inserting a "sleep 2" between your "stty" invocation and the command. In my experience, these tend to help.

On Linux, it's generally easier:

Run screen on the device (often /dev/ttyUSBX)
Quit with CTRL+A :quit
Run the tool on the same device