Remote Technologies RPC-320 - Manual (Page 10)

SETUP AND OPERATION SECTION 2
Page 2-3 RPC-320
sending it char acters. The uploa d and dow nload file
does not conta in any special c odes; th ey are sim ply
ASCII cha racters.
Uploading programs is simply a process of receiving an
ASCII file. Y ou or your progr am simply need to send
"LIST " to receive the entire program . The default baud
rate (960 0) is rather high. The RP C-320' s baud ra te is
changed using the CONF IG BAUD command.
Downloading a program requires transmitting an ASCII
file. As you type in (or download) a line, RP BASIC-52
tokenizes, or com piles, that line. The tim e to do this
depends upon its complexity and how many lines of code
have been entered.
RPBASIC-52 m ust finish compiling a line before starting
the next one. When a line is compiled, a "> " character
is sent. This should be your terminal progra ms pacing
character for dow nloading.
If your communications program cannot look for a
pacing prompt, set it to delay transmission after each line
is sent. A 100 ms delay is usually adequate, but your
program may be long and complex and require more
time. A r esult of a short transmission time is missing or
incomplete pro gram lines.
Editing programs and program ming hints
Files uploaded or downloaded are simply ASCII DOS
text files. No special characters or control codes are
used. You m ay create and edit programs using your
favorite word processor or editor. Just be sure to save
files in DO S text form at.
A technique used to further program documentation and
reduce code space is the use of comments in a
downloaded file. For example, you could have the
following in a file written on your editor:
REM Check position
REM Read output from the pot and
REM calculate the position
2200 a = ain(0) :REM Get position
The first 3 comments downloaded to the RPC -320
are ignored. Similarly, the empty lines between
comm ents are a lso ignored . L ine 2200, with its
comment, is a part of the program and could be listed.
The m ajor pena lty by wr iting a progr am this w ay is
increased download time.
Notice that you can w rite a progr am in lower case
characters. RPBASIC-52 translates them to upper case.
Some program mers put "N EW" as the first line in the
file. During debugging, it is common to insert
"temporary" lines. This ensures that these lines are
gone. Down loading time is increase d when the old
progr am is still pre sent. If you like to wr ite progr ams in
separate modules, you can dow nload them separately.
Modules are assigned blocks of line numbers. Star t up
code might be from 1 to 999. Interrupt handling
(keypad, serial ports) might be from lines 1000 to 1499.
Display output might be from 1500 to 2500. The
programmer must determine the number of lines
required for each section.
RPBASIC-52 autom atically formats a line for minimum
code space. F or example, you could download the
following line of code:
10 fora= 0to5
When you listed this line, it would appear as:
10 FOR A=0 TO 5
Spaces are displayed but not stored. The following line:
10 for a = 0 to 5
would be compressed and displayed as in the second
example above. Spaces are removed. H owever, spaces
as part of a remark or PRINT are not removed.
Instead of uploading and downloading programs, you can
save them to the on card EPRO M. This is useful if you
are using a terminal to write program s. Simply type
S A V E . T o r e tr i ev e a p r o gr a m , t yp e L OA D .