[Coco] multiplexed serial into ip

[Aaron Wolfe]

Hello,

I have been experimenting with a simple way to allow multiple tcpip
connections to a coco over a single serial connection on the bit
banger port.
This allows multi user applications running on the coco to be
accessible via the internet.  I've written a very simple chat room
type
application in Basic as proof of concept.  it mostly works fine :)

I would like to extend this idea to OS-9, to allow multiple terminals
to be internet accessible.  I believe this would be possible, and by
having multiple 'virtual' serial devices corresponding to the
different IP connections perhaps one could run multiline BBS software
originally intended to use modems.
Having a coco bbs connected to the internet is fairly easy, but having
a multi line/user BBS would be really interesting.  This could also be
used to provide multiple regular os9 shell logins over an IP network.

I'm a bit stuck on making progress with an os9 driver right now as I
do not have any working disk drive hardware or RS232 pack.  Currently
I load the software using the Drivewire cable via the bit banger, then
remove that cable and connect the terminal server which does the
IP->serial conversion.  So while the software is running, I have no
drives.. or I can have drives to boot os9 but cannot use the serial
port for my software.. catch 22 kind of thing.    Also, I'm using the
remote2 serial driver from Rainbow mag, this is limiting me to 600
baud which is not very quick when you multiplex several connections
over it :)  I'd like to eventually do this via an rs232 pak if I can
find one, and a multipak interface too i suppose.

Is anyone else interested in this?  If it would be useful to people
then I might go ahead and purchase the superide from cloud9 or
something similar.  I am no expert in os9 either, so although the coco
side of the multiplexed serial connection is very simple I could
certainly use a hand implementing it.  basically just need to extend
the serial driver to provide multiple os9 devices and decode/encode
the serial data to associate with the correct device.   the concept is
simple, not sure about the implementation.

-Aaron