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Wireless RS-232 w/analog modem

Cloudschatze

Cloudschatze

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Apr 17, 2007
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Western United States
I recently added an external modem to my Tandy 1000 RLX setup, and have been researching and experimenting with various (outlandish) means of dealing with the problem of not having a phone-line installed in my studio/computer room. One such solution involves a wireless RS-232 connection, whereby the actual modem can be located pretty-much anywhere in the house.

I'd researched a number of wireless devices, including Sena's Bluetooth-based Parani offering, but given the prohibitive cost, ended-up obtaining two Aerocomm (now Laird Technologies) 2.4GHz ConnexLink transmitter/receiver units for $20. Given that the diminutive and flashy MultiTech modem was a measly $6.00, the entire solution was remarkably inexpensive.

Being unable to find similar use cases involving the Aerocomm devices, I had some reservations about how they'd perform in this type of setup, but I'm pleased to report that they work well indeed (when properly configured).

 
Bluetooth by nature is serial. The generally available products are just obscenely overpriced.
You can buy complete bluetooth modules for as low as $8 and with a tiny amount of work you can make a thumb sized dongle that plugs into your vintage computer's serial port (and you might even be able to get away with powering it through the port). Then all that would need to be done is set the dongle to be addressed as a serial port, take your PC for example and pair with the dongle and now you have a wireless serial link between systems that you could use to then bridge modem or even TCP/IP over.
Hell, you could carry an osborne with the dongle into a Starbucks, power up and use the Osborne's terminal emulator to run an Android session that gives you access to features like Telnet or Lynx and there would be absolutely no wires.

Hell, if someone coded up a lump of software you could pair the dongle with other "dumb" bluetooth devices.
 
Another neat aspect of this solution is that "server" units can be dropped onto any number of additional systems, such my gaming 486, and through the "auto-destination" functionality, provide connectivity to the single client-attached modem. (Only one server unit can be active at a time in this scenario, obviously.)

It just so happens that I have another unit for just this purpose... Thanks again, eBay! :)
 
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