[Coco] CoCo came in handy as a terminal

[Joe Grubbs]

Because the CoCo was already connected via one of my RS232 paks, I just used the software that is loaded in its ROM; Presumably it's much like Color Compac. And this was a straight up serial rs232 connection via getty (think old school host/terminal). Networking wasn't enabled at this point, so telnet or ssh didn't work. :)



> Date: Tue, 5 May 2015 18:36:36 -0400
> From: vincent at webmasterofmydomain.com
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo came in handy as a terminal
> 
>  I would love to use my coco as a terminal.  What communication program did
> you use to reach your linux box? Did you telnet or ssh in?
> 
> On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Joe Grubbs <jsgrubbs at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > So... My primary server machine at home recently received a Linux upgrade.
> > For file system duty, I decided to give the btrfs a try instead of ext4.
> >
> > I had a power blip and was therefore unable to do a proper shutdown. Sadly
> > I encountered a bug in the Linux kernel 3.19 wherein booting fails when
> > remounting an unclean volume. For some reason even the emergency console
> > wouldn't function properly. It would get far enough to display the login
> > prompt, but then the display went blank (and the monitor went into
> > standby). Later I found out the ATI display driver was crashing as well,
> > but anyway...
> >
> > Without a console, I thought I was out of luck. But then I tried
> > connecting via ssh from another machine. No dice... networking and the dhcp
> > client hadn't started.
> >
> > Since I'm old fashioned, I always have a getty instance listening on my
> > serial port, and at the time I had a CoCo2 connected. I wasn't expecting it
> > to work, but I tried loading a communications program on the CoCo, and to
> > my surprise I was greeted with a login prompt!
> >
> > I logged in, started networking and the dhcp client, and proceeded to
> > download kernal 4.0. I had to use wget and those obscenely long and
> > complicated URLs to access the kernal images from the repo... typing that
> > out on a 32 character wide display with mostly "lowercase" green on black
> > characters was an exercise in patience (and eyestrain), but I got it. I
> > installed them and rebooted. Voila! It all works now!
> >
> > Sure I could have probably connected a more modern computer like my
> > laptop, or even my Wyse 50, but by the time I realized that, I was already
> > committed to using the CoCo.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
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> >
> 
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