Conversion of RMB files from binary format to ASCII format

[Marco Bauer]

Hello,

I have a problem with HP-UX / RMB. I'm relatively new to this subject area, so that I don't have much experience, yet. We have a HP workstation 725/100 that is running HP-UX 10.20 as OS. On this machine we are using Rocky Mountain Basic (RMB) programs to control
a productional silicon wafer test system.
These RMB programs have grown over the past 15 years or so to a huge complex of hundreds of files that many of them have dependencies between them.
As the people that have originally written this programs are no longer in the company, it is now my task to get an overview of the programs and their structure and dependencies
in order to bring them into a state so that it
will be possible to understand what they are doing and porting them to more modern environments, e. g. Linux with current PC hardware.

I would like to browse the RMB program files and their contents with a Windows browser and an editor for being able to change quickly between many files and directories. I therefore
have copied the folder structure containing the
RMB programs from the workstation to my PC over the network connection.

The problem now is that most of the RMB program
files are stored in binary file format (HFSLIF)
rather than in readyble ASCII file format. That means it is only possible to open them and have a look what is inside by using RMB on the workstation. (I have as well HTBasic for
Windows from Transera installed on my PC but that software isn't able to open program files in binary format).
A solution would be to open the program files with the RMB program on the workstation as said and save them again in ASCII file format.
But I don't want to do this for hundreds of files individually !

It would be much easier if there was a way to do a file format conversion from binary to ASCII automatically. My idea was to write a little RMB program that walks through a folder,
loads one program of that folder after the other and saves them sequencely in ASCII format.
The problem now is that when I use the statement
LOAD BIN "example.ppg" from within a RMB program or even from within the editor mode, RMB displays an error message saying "ERROR 810 Feature not supported on BASIC/UX". That means I can't open binary program files from within the RMB environment. Opening program files in ASCII format is possible. It is only possible to open a binary program by using its name as a command line argument, e. g. "rmb example.ppg". This opens RMB and instantly runs
the example.ppg. I can then pause the program from inside RMB and save it manually but that is not what I wanted to do. I want to automate the process of opening and saving the files.

Does anybody have an idea how this could be done ? Or has anyone an answer why I can't open binary files from within RMB ?
Many thanks in advance for your answers.

Best regards

Marco Bauer

[Mel Burslan]

Marco,

Looks like you are not the only one with this intention. Please see this thread :

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1065177

Having had my first HP workstation experience with RMB Operating System (not amn app running on HPUX mind you) I know the proprietary nature of the environment and how not-automation-friendly it is unless you are *inside* the RMB environment.

If you are looking into converting a very large number of files and have to have some sort of automation, your path is going to go through something like an xwindow inteface on a windows machine, likes of reflectionX, as well as a scripting/automation environment for windows, like autohotkey.

Then it is upto your analytical abilities and programming knowledge to put all of them together to automate your process.

Sorry for being the bearer of the bad news.

[Marco Bauer]

Hello Mel,

thank you so far for your reply. I feared
that the answer would be something of that
flavour. I guess I'll now have to decide
whether it takes me longer to open and save
all the binary files by hand or to implement
a workaround by using a X-Terminal and Auto-
hotkey or something like that...

Best regards

Marco Bauer

[George Mitchell]

If you still have the RMB machine running, you can use RMB to do the conversion.
Use the command LOAD to read the binary file. Now instead of STORE use SAVE to write it out in ASCII.

Our testing people do this all the time to be able to use standard editors to change a program. You would then use GET to read it back in.

Hope this helps.