ASCII Character Codes

ARMbasic uses the standard "ASCII extended" character set.   The compiler uses the character set values 32 to 126 which corresponds to SPACE through TILDA.

Characters outside this range may have a special meaning and are interpreted by the terminal emulation program that is controlling the ARMstamp.  Those would include BACKSPACE, TAB, CR and LF.  These characters cause changes in the stream of characters going to or from the ARMstamp module.  These characters may be interpreted differently on a PC vs. a Mac.

Two codes XON and XOFF are used for flow control.  When a large ARMbasic program file is sent to the ARMstamp module, the module may require a delay when writing code into Flash memory.  During these writes of code to Flash, an XOFF character will be sent to the PC that indicates that the PC should pause sending data.  After the block is written (about 0.4 second) an XON will be sent to resume communication.

However when using SERIN or SEROUT, there is no special interpretation of characters, so all codes 0 to 255 may be sent without any change.

The ARMmite requires TclTerm to know whether the user ARMbasic code is running.  So now when a program starts a SOH (001) character is sent and when the program finishes an EOT (004) character is sent.  This function has also been added to the ARMstamp code for version 6.10 an later.  User code should avoid using these character codes if TclTerm is being used for communication with the module or board.