[Color Computer] [coco] UUCP fereal on a coco

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 23:27 -0500, George Ramsower wrote:

> 
> Actually, I miss those days.. (Beat The System)
> 


Actually you can. The routers on the Internet forward your packets free
of charge. The only trick is that to get your packets to the first
router, the ISPs are charging a per-month fee.

So all you have to do is get around the ISP. You can do that through:

a) An open wireless access point. These days many cities are rolling out
free municipal wireless. There are also grassroots efforts to do this.
b) Mesh of folks willing to allow you to 'dial-up' to their computer. 

a) is easy, you could even do this with a Coco. Take a Linksys wireless
AP, add a TTL to RS232 level converter and a serial port, and run the
free Linux distribution on it, with an open CSLIP connection to Coco.
Put a directional antenna on top of your house and point it at an open
wireless AP (ideally, one intended to be open to public use).

Sure you could make the argument that the AP is actually a more powerful
CPU than the coco, but try to suspend disbelief, you'll enjoy life more.

For b) we discussed this on the m100 list. The idea they came up with
was to create a custom knoppix distro that will run on an old PC that
just sits on the phone line and waits for calls. You would dial into
such a PC at a local # with your coco. In our case we figured we'd just
provide shell accounts. For the coco, since I think TCP/IP exists, one
could provide a CSLIP connection.

Unfortunately I think the idea disappeared at the idea stage. Probably
not enough people willing to devote $15 a month to an extra dialup phone
line.


But I think a) is fairly workable, and in fact it would get your whole
house on the net cheaply. If you already have net access, and you are
adding wireless to your house, consider the Linksys, since the coco can
be hacked onto it... of course in that case you're not really stickin'
it to the man, so not quite as enticing I guess...

-- John.






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