Data acquisition on a microcomputer and data processing on a mainframe: A communication problem

A communication link which has been developed between a microcomputer and a mainframe to support several requirements encountered in the context of research projects dealing with handwritten signature verification and character recognition is described in this paper. The software package, which has been coded in assembly language, allows on-line transmission of data from the microcomputer memory, the keyboard or diskette files to the host. It permits reception of data on the screen, the printer or the files of the microcomputer. Two approaches to error detection an and recovery have been sequentially implemented. A summary of the transmission algorithm is presented with the help of a schematic pseudocode.