Communicating with BCD Devices - The BCD Protocol
Below is a general description of how to use BCD's 4-Character Commands.

General Operation and Programming Techniques
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The BCD "prompt" character is ">" (greater than sign, ASCII 62). A prompt will be returned after commands that are completed and/or when the deck is ready to accept a new command.

DO NOT send a new command until you have received the ">" prompt after having sent the previous command. The only exception is the ESCape character (ASCII 27). Sending an ESC will cause the current command to abort and perform a partial reset of the controller. The prompt will then return. ESC is not followed by a Carriage Return, Line Feed.

Character Pacing: Generally, the unit is ready to accept a command immediately after it sends the prompt character. Under some conditions, however, there may be a delay of several milliseconds before the first character is actually accepted. If you supect that a command is not accepted, issue the LAST command to dump the unit's input buffer to your terminal. If you see "LAY" instead of "PLAY" or "TOP" instead of "STOP", try adding a short delay between the return of the ">" and the first character of your command.

The BCD Command Syntax: CMMD [modifier] [parameter] CR LF -----------------------------------------------------------
The command line consists of the 4-character command, sometimes followed by a modifier, sometimes followed by a parameter, always terminated with a Carriage Return and Line Feed. Modifiers: Modifiers go after the command and before any parameter.

Frame Numbers:  Frame Number Modifiers are only available for those machines that return frame numbers.  The DVD-1150 always returns :00 as the final frames unless equipped with the optional Time Code system.

Colon (:) assigns parameter formatting and VCR replies in SMPTE format, i.e. HH:MM:SS:FF
. If "FRAM" returns 1800, then "FRAM:" will return 00:01:00:00.

Semicolon (;) Several commands may be concatenated on one line, separated by a semicolon (;).

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