[Coco] Using a pee sea as a "server" for internet access?

[Aaron Banerjee]

I had a terminal on my linux box.  It involves setting up one of your
serial ports as a "dial-in" modem (e.g. putting a line in /etc/inittab to
monitor the port).  I believe the Modem-HOWTO gives instructions.  I'll
find out more if anyone is interested.
                  - Aaron

On Tue, 29 May 2007, Joel Ewy wrote:

> Leon Howell wrote:
> > I have heard that a lot of people connect their CoCo to the internet by 
> > connecting it to a pee sea. The pee sea does the hard part but you're actualy 
> > using the CoCo. It's like using a shell account but you own the whole mess.
> >
> > How do I do this? I have Supercomm, Osterm, Jterm, Telecomm, and an ibm 
> > thinkpad with windows '95 and internet explorer 2.0, but I can download a 
> > different browser or other program if I need to, and I hate that %$&@ task 
> > bar/start button junk so I will probably switch to an older version of windows 
> > ( probably 3.0) if I can get the MWave drivers.
> >
> >   
> I don't think that any version of MS-Windows is likely to be very
> helpful for this particular task without the addition of some extra
> software, which may not even exist for Windows.  MS-Windows expects its
> terminal to be the PC's keyboard and video display, and while there are
> lots of Windows-based programs to make your PC act like a terminal for
> another computer, Windows has precious little facility for putting its
> display up on a text terminal in a way that would be acceptable.  I have
> vague memories of some kind of program that allowed you to run DOS from
> a remote terminal, but that was a long time ago.  Maybe Cygwin could
> come to the rescue?
> 
> But since UNIX was born into a world of text terminals and teletypes, a
> UNIX-like operating system is probably your best bet here.  Fortunately,
> there are a number of Live CD options available if you want to preserve
> MS-Windows on your hard drive.
> 
> I've used DSL (Damn Small Linux) on a lot of older systems.  But I've
> never tried to use it with an external terminal, so I don't know what
> kind of getty support it has (getty is the program that hangs around
> watching a serial line for a terminal (or TeleTYpe) to log in).  You
> might also try something like Dyne: Bolic or some Knoppix variant.  I'm
> not sure what the specs of your computer are, but I am sure that others
> on this list can chime in with their favorite Live CD distro.  I'm also
> sure that somebody who just doesn't get it will pipe up and tell you to
> run out and get a new computer so you can install a full-blown,
> cutting-edge Linux distro to the tune of about 6-8GB HD, 1.5GHz CPU, and
> 512M RAM, just so you can browse the Web in a VT100 emulator on your
> CoCo.  :)
> 
> Once you can log in with your terminal emulator and get a shell, you can
> browse the Web with lynx, links, or elinks, and you can telnet, FTP,
> ssh, or whatever else you like.  You can use rz/sz to copy files to and
> from your CoCo.
> > Someday I will try to write a web browser for OS-9 & Multi Vue, but first I 
> > need to get online, and I would prefer to use the CoCo, even if I have to 
> > stick a pee sea in between.
> >
> >   
> If you get a Web browser running on the CoCo, you will be a CoCo hero. 
> I have been thinking about making some attempt to port elinks to the
> MM/1.  One thought I've had is to cook up a little proxy that would run
> on another machine, which would grab an image off the Web, scale it way
> down, quantize it down to 16 colors, and then send it to the CoCo for
> display.  Right-click (if you have the two-button mouse) or shift-click
> on the image and you can download the original.
> 
> I think that a sensible thing to do in OS-9 would be to first write a
> 'wget' utility which would run as a separate process and retrieve a file
> via HTTP.  Since the CoCo has no proper TCP/IP stack, the first versions
> of 'wget' could include as much of that as necessary, or could even
> start by ordering a slave PC to 'wget' something for it and send it to
> the CoCo via zmodem, or some similar protocol.  Other versions could use
> the Superboard's ethernet, or a Siteplayer Telnet module, or whatever.
> 
> Then write a simple HTML renderer.  Make it ignore most of the
> complicated tags at first.  Just get the basic formatting right and put
> the text up on the screen.  Then it could be made to call 'view' to
> display pictures, either pre-processed into something CoCo-friendly by a
> utility running on a faster computer, or (for GIFs) using view's (rather
> slow) GIF rendering capability, depending on a menu selection.
> 
> Written in the right way, a little web browser could provide a simple,
> mostly text-based display as a stand-alone program, and could optionally
> interface to tools running on more powerful computers to improve the
> display.  There might even be an option to remote control a different
> machine to use a full-featured browser to render a page, capture a
> screen shot, and then send it to the CoCo for display.  So you could
> browse around in text mode until you see a page that you want to get a
> better view of, then hit a button or select a menu item, and a helper
> app running on a PC will send you a picture of what the page looks like
> in all its graphics-intensive glory.  Just a few thoughts.
> 
> JCE
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> 
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