I remember using this to transfer files with BBS... zmodem was more popular but kermit could take advantage of full duplex so you could upload some files while downloading others at the same time. I had no idea it was still a thing.
I seem to remember the key benefit ZMODEM had over Kermit was the ability to restart an interrupted file transfer. This was especially useful in the days of yore when your younger sibling or mom picked up the extension causing your modem to drop its connection.
As I recall it Zmodem was more than nominally faster than Xmodem but in those days to squeeze even 5 to 10% speed improvement in speed on a 2400-14400 bps modem was huge.
The same here. My BBS time was with [xz]modem only, but as the author of the article I've used kermit for a HP48-SX too
(Love it that there is a android emulator for this calculator :-)
I was active during that time, but like programming languages now, I played with all the ul/dl protocols I could find, then. In addition to the ones you mentioned, there was also wxmodem and ymodem that saw some popularity in places.
I once had a chat on Compuserve with Ward Christensen, the inventor of xmodem. He seemed surprised that anyone recognized his name.
If you make comparisons only for "upload/download a file" versus, for example, zmodem...Kermit doesn't fare well.
Kermit is, though, more than that. One example is that it includes a scripting functionality somewhat like the once popular "Expect" package[1]. For things like interacting with a Cisco router cli, ftp servers, etc. Or, as the article mentions, "server mode[2]"...something zmodem also doesn't do.
So, for example, it was really useful "back in the day" for things like connecting to a network enabled modem bank and running batch jobs to do various things.
Ah sure. I didn't mean they were now unpopular. Just that the need for them has drawn down as many things you would automate via expect now have better api-based choices. Or have otherwise dwindled...I don't see too many modem banks around these days.
Very true, formerly command line only network devices now have APIs in some cases; the Cisco Meraki devices don't even have a CLI, only a cloud based web mgmt GUI, or a Restful API.
It was optimizable - if you had a proper Kermit client that did all the stuff ZModem did, like sliding ACK windows and larger packet sizes. After we had error-correcting modem protocols, line noise was much less of an issue.
But most Kermit protocols in terminal software implemented only the most basic version of the protocol and didn't support all the options that you needed to set.
Not sure about resuming, which was AFAICT only a ZModem thing (and the best part of it).
> I also remember using Kermit for a BBS file transfer once. Once.
Similar memory here. Wasn’t sure about the different protocols offered in Telix and I used Kermit once because the BBS offered it. Right after the sysop burst in on chat and told me not to use Kermit and only use zmodem.
That was basically what I did until HSLink came out and let me do bidirectional, chat, and play Tetris while waiting. Good times. Good memories.
