Premier 6800 laptop

[MikeS]

...I'm interested in this "tcpser". I just looked it up and can't quite understand what it does. Is it for the echo and Hayes commands that it has interest? I don't think it's been mentioned on this forum before and it looks like it could be what some people are looking for.

Huh? Have you tried that little box with the magnifying glass in the upper right hand corner? ;-)

At least 12 different discussions; there are also various other versions of RS-232 <> TCP bridges, e.g. TCPSERJ, COM2TCP/TCP2COM, LEGACY, BBSServer, etc. and of course hardware like the LanTronix boxes, especially useful for getting non-PC systems on the internet.

 

[MikeS]

I tried really hard to do that once, but couldn't figure it out. Apparently I didn't have the right software - though granted I was using an 8088 Sr. Partner. I'll have to check that out next time I get the itch to play with my XT/AT boxen.

No special software required on the client machine, just a terminal program; that's the whole point after all of bridge software like tcpser.

I *did* however get it on the 'net by telnetting into a Linux laptop with a wifi card. This meant I was essentially using the laptop as a huge OP wifi card with a serial interface, but the part I didn't manage was using it directly, rather than via terminal emulation. :/

I'm not following this at all; 'telnetting into a Linux laptop' suggests that the client already has a network connection, so why would you need a bridge?

- "using a laptop as a wifi card with a serial interface" is what the bridge software is effectively all about; usually you only run a terminal program on the client, connecting to BBS or other software through the bridge computer or hardware adapter.

- logging into a *nix box as a tty is different; you're still running terminal software on the client but the software is usually running on the 'bridge' computer, although the client can also be passed through to the 'net.

- "Using it directly" in the context of WiFi would suggest to me using an RS-232 <> WiFi adapter (instead of a laptop equivalent as above).

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Really nice laptop, it looks exactly like a Twinhead 386 machine I have. Even the connectors, power supply, bag and color are the same.

Probably because it is a Twinhead machine. I didn't know until I opened it up to see about changing the clock battery, several of the chips inside say "Twinhead International" and it came with a program in the root directory called THLINK.EXE which is copyrighted Twinhead as well. I'm guessing they built/branded computers for OEMs as well, in this case what was likely an Office Max brand.

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Interesting. I had no idea there were so many other options. I just tried using Legacy, but for some reason it doesn't want to work for me. I can tell there is a connection being made, but Telemate does nothing. I tried BBSServer earlier, but I don't think it liked my x64 operating system.

The only thing that doesn't seem to work while connecting over tcpser is downloading files. Granted, I've only tried it on one BBS so far, so maybe it's a problem on their end, but any Zmodem connection I make errors out after a while. How long it takes depends on the speed I've set the serial port at, if I'm running it at 2400 the transfer will run for a few minutes, while if I connect at 57600 it fails instantly. This is basically a non-issue though, because I'm more interested in the message board experience, and can move any files I need to over Laplink or floppy.

I'd really like to get my hands on one of those LanTronix boxes though.

 

[Caluser2000]

Good to see you're having fun with the laptop.

Here's a link to tcperv for Windows for those that want to have a shot and don't have a *nix box or Cygwin http://gcns.com/vice/vice.html Be sure to grab the cygwin1.dll as well.

Edit: Better still Jim Brains site http://www.jbrain.com/pub/linux/serial/ The above appears to be just for ip232 use.

 

[MikeS]

Interesting. I had no idea there were so many other options.

A couple of us were playing around putting TRS-80 M100 laptops (not PC-compatible) on the 'net for computer-to-computer connections, file transfer and a BBS; we tried most of the options and ultimately liked com2tcp best:
http://com0com.sourceforge.net/doc/UsingCom0com.pdf
Note that this is an open sourceforge project, not to be confused with the semi-commercial program by the same name at Astrogeek.

The only thing that doesn't seem to work while connecting over tcpser is downloading files. Granted, I've only tried it on one BBS so far, so maybe it's a problem on their end, but any Zmodem connection I make errors out after a while.

Sometimes ymodem works a little better, but this is probably a flow control issue, the only real problem with RS-232 over TCP/IP.

Normally asynchronous RS-232 communication is one character at a time, using control lines (hardware handshaking) or special control codes (XON/XOFF handshaking) for the receiver to tell the sender to pause for a moment while the receiver processes the data; a few characters may still get sent before the sender reacts and stops transmitting, and then it waits for the signal to start again.

Data sent over the network is sent in packets which could be as short as 1 character which would be hugely inefficient considering the overhead, or as long as hundreds or over a thousand characters; once the sender sends that thousand byte packet it's gone, any signal from the receiver to pause isn't going to do anything, and the receiver may well choke on the packet if it can't put it away fast enough. As you've noticed, if you slow down the transmission rate it will be better, but that's the rate between the receiver and the 'modem' and even if the bridge stops sending on the RS-232 side you will still have characters piling up on the internet side which will probably eventually overflow or choke.

Ideally you'd want the bridge itself to stop passing data to the receiver when it gets the 'pause' signal, buffer any incoming data until it gets the go ahead, and also tell the remote transmitter to pause until it gets a go ahead.

I'd really like to get my hands on one of those LanTronix boxes though.

Watch eBay and if you're lucky you can sometimes pick one up for around $10-$20; they are the best and most flexible solution IMO.

 

[mechanizeddeath]

I think you're right about the flow control. It's funny, I was so much better at this stuff when I was 12 years old, but I've forgotten so much. Still fun to learn it all over again though!

I tried to get the com2tcp working but failed, I'm probably overlooking something very simple, but I was hoping to try out some other software and maybe even figure out my flow control issues. But again, I'm more interested in the messages and door games.

Speaking of messages, I actually found a local BBS still online since the 90s, and I almost had a heart attack when I realized I was reading a message I wrote back in 1995. (It was stupid too, which makes me wonder what today's kids will think about their Facebook posts in 2030, but I digress...)

Anyway, after seeing that blast from the past, I'm even happier that I dove back into this after all these years.

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Update:

Since I really wanted one of those Lantronix boxes, I started looking for one. Incredibly, I found and won a NIB one for just $30 shipped. A bit more than the $10 or $20 I was hoping for, but far better than the $100+ other sellers were charging for them. The unit I purchased is actually a UDS100, not a UDS10, but I checked the documentation and it turns out they're essentially the same product, only I ended up with the faster one. Can't wait until it gets here!

Speaking of upgrades, I ordered a few parts to (hopefully) get a better hard drive into this thing. It's not that 40MB isn't enough, it's that the drive is very, very loud. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but it is a 3.5" drive and every bit as loud as the desktop drives of the era. The hard drive itself uses a small SATA sized connector I've never seen before and can't even name, but the other end of the cable appears to be a standard 44 pin IDE header. I'm not sure if it will even work, but I'm going to try replacing the hard drive with a CompactFlash to 44pin IDE adapter.

 

[MikeS]

Congrats on the good buy; $30.00 for a NIB UDS100, shipped, is a steal indeed and there is a fair bit of demand (competition) for these from the CP/M etc. crowd. Now you just have to find an interesting place to connect to, other than downloading files from yourself ;-)

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Congrats on the good buy; $30.00 for a NIB UDS100, shipped, is a steal indeed and there is a fair bit of demand (competition) for these from the CP/M etc. crowd. Now you just have to find an interesting place to connect to, other than downloading files from yourself ;-)

Mostly just the BBSes, although I'm sure there's a few more interesting things I could connect to, I just haven't thought of them yet.

Tore the battery pack open this evening. This was easy, since the pack was simply shrink wrapped together. The battery itself is composed of four completely unlabeled D cells. I could easily rebuild this pack, since my other hobby is RC cars, but D cells are kind of pricey.

Still, the idea of actually being able to go mobile with this machine is an exciting prospect. Also, I'm kind of wondering what the battery life would be on a pack made entirely of modern cells? Could be interesting...

 

[mechanizeddeath]

The Lantronix box came in the mail today, and I managed to get it working after some trial and error. The good news is that it works perfectly. The bad news is that in order to do so, I have to specify ip and port numbers rather than the normal address of the BBS. This isn't a huge deal, since I'm only "dialing" out to a handful of BBSes and can use Telemate's address book anyway, but I wasted about an hour trying to connect before I figured this out.

Also decided to build a test pack. Found some really cheap NiCD "D" cells, and built a quick and dirty battery pack using aluminum foil and electrical tape. Looks terrible and isn't exactly safe, but it does work. Even with only cheap low capacity cells, it can run for about 10 or 15 minutes on a charge, so I know the charge circuitry still works if I want to build a pack that lasts a lot longer and isn't a fire hazard.

 

[MikeS]

Next: WiFi!

File transfers working OK now?

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Next: WiFi!

File transfers working OK now?

Sadly, they are not. I tried all the available flow control methods and all of them failed after a minute or so, just like before. There's still a chance I may be overlooking something, however.

Another fun aspect: Since I never throw anything away, I'm connecting to the Lantronix box with the same serial cable I used with my Intel 14.4 modem back in my teens. At some point shortly after I got it, the plastic cap broke off one of the thumbscrews on the DB9 end, and I can't tell you how fun it is to see that same cable with the missing cap sticking out the back of a computer again.

WiFi should be doable with the right adapter. I was just thinking that with an external battery pack for the UDS-100 and the relevant WiFi adapter, I could connect to a BBS or even laplink some files with NO WIRES. How crazy is that? That's the stuff I dreamed about doing when I was 12 or 13.

 

[MikeS]

Sadly, they are not. I tried all the available flow control methods and all of them failed after a minute or so, just like before. There's still a chance I may be overlooking something, however.

Hmm... If I find the time I'll revisit this and try it myself; I've transferred lots of ASCII text files with no problem but it's been a while since I've tried one of the x/y/zmodem protocols.
...

WiFi should be doable with the right adapter. I was just thinking that with an external battery pack for the UDS-100 and the relevant WiFi adapter, I could connect to a BBS or even laplink some files with NO WIRES. How crazy is that? That's the stuff I dreamed about doing when I was 12 or 13.

You're not the only crazy one. I've been thinking about exactly the same thing; I've got a couple of Lantronix units and a small ethernet<>WiFi bridge but never got around to actually hooking it up. There are also RS232<>WiFi bridges but they're a little more expensive: $40. for external plug-in units and around $10 less for embedded ones; might have to try one of those.

Looking forward to sitting at McDonald's reading my email on my Radio Shack M100...

Here it is a while back in Toronto connecting to a CP/M box in Australia:

 

[mechanizeddeath]

You're not the only crazy one. I've been thinking about exactly the same thing; I've got a couple of Lantronix units and a small ethernet<>WiFi bridge but never got around to actually hooking it up. There are also RS232<>WiFi bridges but they're a little more expensive: $40. for external plug-in units and around $10 less for embedded ones; might have to try one of those.

Looking forward to sitting at McDonald's reading my email on my Radio Shack M100...

Glad to know I'm not alone. I have a small bridge as well, right now it is giving WiFi to my old wired-only Xbox 360, given to my parents who use it as nothing more than a glorified Netflix player since I gave up on console gaming a while back. I can't very well ask for it back, but I might "borrow" it for a day at some point as a test.

I've seen the embedded bridges, and briefly considered using one of those instead. Actually, if I'm able to successfully gut the hard drive and use a CF card instead, there would be ample room inside the case to include a wireless adapter, although there's no internal serial header so I would be stuck with at least some kind of ugly kludge to get the serial back inside the case. May as well tape a bunch of stuff to the lid and make it look like I'm a "hacker" from some super cheesy 80s movie or something.

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Running into some issues...

A while back I decided to replace the 40MB hard drive with a CompactFlash card. The parts came today (finally!) and I set about trying to get it all set up.

The BIOS is pretty old, so of course I had to set the C/H/S manually. Been a while since I did that. Figured out that the 512MB CF card reports 995 cylinders, so that's what I entered, along with 16 heads and 63 sectors. Now I remember the whole 504MB issue, but that was drives over 1024 cylinders, so with only 995 this should be fine, right?

Problem is, it doesn't seem to work no matter what I do. I tried a fresh MS-DOS install, and whether I do 5.0 or 6.22, it hangs at the same point, installing COMMAND.COM at 99%. I started thinking either the card or adapter might be bad, so I pulled out a broken Pentium laptop I had and tried that. That boots and installs fine, no issues, but when I move the drive back to the 386, it hangs at boot. If I put in a floppy and boot from that, I can switch to the C drive and list the directory, but trying to open anything gives a disk error.

Either it isn't compatible with this setup, or I'm overlooking something. I'm inclined to believe the former, but figured I'd throw this out here in case anyone has any suggestions on what to try next. I was perfectly happy with the 40MB drive, but it would be nice to get a bit more space and less noise/heat/power consumption.

I used to have a whole bunch of smaller CF cards from 32MB on up to 256MB, but they disappeared long ago, so trying a different card is out of the question at the moment.

 

[mechanizeddeath]

Well I've given up on the whole CF hard drive replacement. I found a 16MB CF card in an old camera and decided to try that for troubleshooting purposes, and it doesn't like that one either. I also tried a few small SD cards inside a CF to SD adapter, and as expected, those didn't work either. I even tried using an old 2.5" HDD, 2GB in size, entered in as a 504MB drive. No such luck, although it does at least get past installing COMMAND.COM, however it hangs at boot and eventually gives a non-system disk or disk error.

I can only conclude that unfortunately, this particular laptop is simply incompatible with more modern 44 pin IDE solutions, despite superficial compatibility and at least some basic functionality. A shame, since I would have loved the extra space. No big deal though, as I'm sure I can find a use for that nifty adapter at some future point.