Serial port activity?

[DarkLord]

Oh, just re-read that one post...hmm, so it's possible that
what I was seeing, where a caller was still online, even though
definitely inactive, could have been because I had power
cycled my WiModem232 and the S30 register was not saved.

Good to know. I'll test that out too. Mostly because I'm
curious now. 

[admin]

Yes, that is correct... I didn't save the setting when you do the AT&W. I went to add that support to the new S73 function and noticed that I forgot to do that when I added the S30 function!

So, if you did power cycle the modem after doing this then that would be the issue. But there are cases I can still see where a BBS sends a line of text like "are you still there" after so much time and that would reset S30's timer. Likewise a terminal program could be told to periodically send a NOOP type command (like FTP programs do) to force the connection to stay open. So, the new option gets around that and make a hard cutoff after some specified period of time.

[DarkLord]

Okay, just to make sure. Does S30 have to be turned off (0) for S73 to work?

Thanks...

[admin]

They are independent from each other. You could use both - S30 is your normal inactivity timer (something short like maybe 5 minutes?) and S73 would be the maximum allowed connection time for a single call. This would kick someone off if they did not have any activity within the specified (S30) time, and worst case would be if they used something like a terminal that pings every 60 seconds automatically where they would be kicked off after the S73 timer expired.

[DarkLord]

Gotcha. Makes perfect sense. This should have all bases covered.

So far, my tests have been successful. I set S73 to a low number
and it's worked every time. I gotta tell you though, I was starting
to think that Express was the unkillable software from Hades.

I ran the first test, setting S73 to 7 (7 minutes). I downloaded a
file and let it set there...7 mins....8 mins... 9....all the way through
15 minutes. I gave up, ended the call and rechecked the WiModem
232. AT&V showed the S73 register at 99 - where I had it before I
changed it and ran the test. The only thing I didn't do was an AT&W
and save it. I did that and that time it worked. Not sure why changing
it but not saving and then running Express would do that. I did not
cycle the WiModem232's power or reboot the ST computer. <shrugs>

The important thing is, with the S73 register saved, it works! ! !

BTW, it makes perfect sense why the S30 register wasn't working when
a user goes AWOL after a download. Express keeps sending "Press
<return> Please, over and over, something like every 5-10 seconds. I
don't know why I wasn't thinking about that.

Anyway, Skoal! Success! Job well done and thank you so much.

[admin]

Yeah, I seem to recall several BBS programs that ping the user after so much time goes by without any activity. Usually there is also the option to terminate the "call" after so many pings as well.

If your BBS init or hang-up/restart string has ATZ at the start of it, then anything that was not saved using AT&W would be reset. It's not uncommon to see +++ ATZ being sent to the modem after disconnecting. ATZ is the command that re-loads the settings. You could set S73 to 88 and see that it is 88 with AT&V, and if you then typed ATZ and looked it would be whatever value was saved permanently.

[DarkLord]

Ah, that's interesting stuff and makes perfect sense in explaining what's
happening.

I've been running with the WiModem232 for a few days now and it's
looking really good. The problem I had before with the menu screens
sometimes being broken up hasn't happened again. Downloads are
doing pretty good, usually getting 1850-1900 on that 19.2k speed so
I'm happy with that.

I did adjust the serial ports on the ST with HSModem, putting the upload
and download buffers at 256, then I used the BL command on the WiModem
to match at 256 and it seems to be working fairly well. I might try taking it
up to 512 on both sometime just to see what happens.

Thanks again for all the help.

[admin]

The upload/download buffers won't make any difference for such slow baud rates. These really only matter when using 115200 and 230400 baud rates and that is for handling packets to/from the router not from the computer side. I probably don't even need these anymore with the v4.x firmware. v5.x will also have a new change to how the transfers work as I am now triple buffering the data so that Zmodem works better.

[DarkLord]

Okay, sounds good - I look forward to trying it out, as always.

Thanks!