Character Mode Communication Programming

At a Glance

This page describes the communication functions available in character mode and gives an example of communication between two stations (Micro and Premium).

Available Functions

Three specific communication functions are defined to send and receive data to a communication channel in character mode:

PRINT_CHAR: send a character string
INPUT_CHAR: request character string read
OUT_IN_CHAR: send a character string followed by a read request

NOTE: The use of these functions must be consistent with the configuration.

Example

A station at address {20.1} on a Fipway network wants to send then receive a character string to/from a video terminal connected to the built-in link of a station’s TSX SCY 21601 module at address {20.3}.

Programming the communication function:

The following table describes the function's different parameters:

Parameter	Description
ADDR (’{20.3}0.0.0.SYS’)	Address of the message's destination device
1	Send, receive
Str_2	Content of the message received, variable of type STRING
%MW170:4	Exchange report, length of the string sent, then that of the string received
Str_1	Content of the message to send, variable of type STRING

NOTE: Before each function launch, the number of characters to be sent must be entered in the length parameter (in bytes). In the example: %MW173 = 10. At the end of the exchange, this will contain the number of characters received (in bytes). The value 0 enables you to send the entire character string.