[Coco] RS232 to WiFi/Ethernet

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Jan 30, 2018 1:04 PM, "Ron Klein" <ron at kdomain.org> wrote:

In lieu of these hardware based solutions being discussed, isn't the use of
Drivewire (for those that use it) still viable for the purpose of using
telnet for BBS'ing, etc?

Some may disagree, but I consider Drivewire to be an excellent solution for
this type exercise.  Drivewire works with real Coco's, emulators and even
the CoCo3FPGA.  There are even ways to use Drivewire wirelessly if desired.

My 2 cents.



Drivewire has provided telnet and "internet BBS" capability to any OS9
software for many years now.  Even better, the user space tools like telnet
are designed to work with Boisy's network library, so any mechanism that
implements these low level calls can take advantage of work already
completed for telnet and other protocols (wget for http things for
example).. even if they have nothing to do with Drivewire.  We already
designed with the hope that some other mechanism would become available.

I know some people view the requirements for Drivewire with negativity, but
it would be a shame to waste all the work already done if it isn't
necessary.  Most of it doesn't require "Drivewire" to be useful.

I don't have the time to monitor this issue closely each time it comes up,
but I do hope someone involved in this latest attempt is familiar with the
existing body of work.  Regardless of what hardware you use to replace the
PC in a drivewire like solution, you also need the Coco side stuff.  We
already did that, and we did it in the hopes something better than
Drivewire would be underneath from day one


-Aaron