Printing from HP-86B ?

[J-F Garnier]

(07-11-2017 07:58 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  How does the DOSLINK device control the flow of file data it sends to the loop? e.g. does it send it line by line ("line" here meaning text up to the endline character) or just a steady stream of file bytes? The sample program is oriented around getting 'lines' of text up to 120 characters, so I'm not sure how it would handle a continuous stream, or a binary file (which on 71B, can be transferred from DOSFILE without problem).

DOSLINK acts as an interface, providing bytes to the loop when asked by the controller.
The problem of the end-of-data must be managed explicitly by program, either using an EOF mark (as I proposed), or using some kind of ON ERROR trap.
For binary data, OUTPUTing to the PC is no problem. ENTERing must know the exact format of the expected data and end-of-data.
ASCII (text) file are the most convenient way to exchange data with a PC.

J-F