"Generic Kermit-80" is a implementation of Kermit that should run on many
8080-compatible CP/M-80 2.2 system with little or no modification.  (There's
also a generic Kermit-80 for CP/M-80 3.0).  Unlike other Kermit-80
implementations, it contains no system-dependent manipulation of the serial
port or screen.  All I/O is done with standard CP/M BIOS calls, switching
devices by manipulating the IOBYTE.  Whether Generic Kermit runs, or can be
made to run, on a particular micro depends upon two things:

(1) Did the manufacturer fully implement the "optional" CP/M IOBYTE?

(2) Is the IOBYTE implemented "correctly?", that is, are the four fields
    defined correctly and in the right order, and do the CON:, LST:,
    PUN:, and BAT: devices indicate the devices that KERMIT expects?
    KERMIT wants the serial port to correspond to the RDR: and PUN: devices,
    and wants to be able to switch the console between the CRT: and
    BAT: devices, where BAT: should be defined to use RDR: for input
    and LST: for output.

Generic Kermit is known to run without modification on the DEC VT180 (up to
9600 baud) and other DEC micros.  It was tested on the Intertec Superbrain and
failed to work because the IOBYTE did not point to the CRT screen in the
expected way.  Similarly for the DECmate-II CP/M option, but in this case the
correct IOBYTE definitions were discovered, and a "specific" version of generic
Kermit-80 was built for the DECmate II; if you look for DMII in the
CPMGENERI.ASM source file, you'll see that only a couple definition statements
were necessary to do the trick.

The other way in which generic Kermit-80 is generic is that it does not assume
anything about terminal; it does not attempt to emulate a VT52 or any other
type of terminal, and it does not use fancy screen control when updating the
screen during file transfer.  It assumes the micro has the ability to auto-
matically wrap long lines around on the screen.

The present VT180 and DECmate Kermits are actually generic Kermit slightly
modified to do VT100 display screen updating during file transfer.

To get Generic Kermit on to your system (if you can't get it on a floppy
disk), use whatever procedure is available to you on your micro to download
the file KER:CPMGENERIC.HEX.  The DDT program listed in the Kermit Users
Manual will do the trick on most systems, or use MODEM7 or some other file
transfer package if you have it.

To modify Generic Kermit to run on a new system on which it does not run
as distributed, see the instructions in the section "Generic Kermit-80"
in the back of the Kermit User Guide.

How did it get done (in the words of Bernie Eiben, "inventor"):

The "standard" CP/M system allows limited assignment of "logical" devices to
physical devices. This is handled by the I/O byte. The I/O byte allows one to
"assign" 4 "physical" devices to 4 "logical" devices.  This allows one to use
the CP/M call CONSTAT ( is there a Input at the "logical" CONSOLE-device ? ) to
be used for any of the "other" four assignable devices for CONSOL.  One of
these devices is BAT:, the BATCH device ( Input comes from "logical" device
READER, Output goes to "logical" device LIST ).

We use in GENERIC Kermit during CONNECT-state (terminal-emulation) and
SEND/RECEIVE state the CONSOLE=BAT: assignment, to be able to "poll" for
pending character-input from the physical device READER=RDR: , which is for the
DEC-VT180 (aka ROBIN) and the DEC-RAINBOW the COMM-Port.

To circumvent BDOS-implementation differences, we call the BIOS directly. This
is accomplished in routine INIADR, which grabs location 1 and 2 ( at 0 is a JMP
WARMSTART ), adds increments of 3 ( we got the second entry of the BIOS-JMP
vector -- the next three entries are JMP CONSTAT, JMP CONIN and JMP CONOUT )
and plugs them into our BIOS-CALL routines.