[I'm not an article write per se... I hope this is cool] Telnetting to a Commodore Until the recent success of the Slip-Demo by "Poldi", the only access Commodore 8-bit machines have had to the vast internet is something called a "shell" account, where we called our internet provider with a normal terminal program, and then ran text based applications to browse the internet. This still, however, did not solve the problem of putting our own machines on the internet. Every html server, every telnet daemon, every ftp site, was and had to be run by a machine for whom the proper hardware and software exists. What I've done is not so much as miraculously solve this problem, but provide what I believe to be a very interesting way around it. The brain child of the idea came from a friend of mine in Arizona named Henry Knoepfle, who for reasons unknown wanted to put up the Commodore BBS program I co-wrote on the internet and make it available through a telnet daemon. With the help of another friend in California, whose knowledge of LINUX programming was a bit more extensive, the solution was found. It starts with a physical connection between the Commodore computer and a Intel-based PC running a UNIX-like operating system called LINUX. The connection is between the two modem ports on both machines. On the PC, an RS232 standard com. port is used to connect to external modems. On the Commodore, a nonstandard RS232 edge connector is where our modems are plugged in. The first step was to build a converter so that the modem ports on both machines could talk to each other. These "RS232" adaptors are commonly available for sale, but this one had to be special, as it would not go directly to a modem, but to another machine which would also think it is connected to a modem. This RS232 Null-modem adaptor cable would be the communication link between the Commodore and the PC. On the PC, the operating system LINUX comes fully equipped with a telnet daemon, which is always running and accepting incoming telnet sessions for remote users. What a user telnets to our host PC computer and logs on, we want a program to allow the user to immediately begin talking to the Commodore computer through the connection we have built. But what sort of program could we have the computer run that would begin communicating with the PC's modem port as soon as it is loaded? Why, a terminal program! The missing link between the telnet session and the PC's com. port (which as you'll recall is connected in turn to the Commodore's modem port) is a simple terminal program which comes with LINUX called "minicom". By configuring minicom to talk to the proper port at the proper baud rate, a user that telnets in to the PC and logs on will become virtually connected to the Commodore. Now the question becomes, what sort of program can we run on the Commodore which will sit around waiting for connections from its modem port and then begin communicating with the port in some simple text based way? As you may already have guessed, a BBS is precisely the sort of program which is built to do just this. With just a few modifications, the BBS program I used, called Zelch 128, was set up to receive and maintain connections with the PC just as if it were an ordinary incoming phone call on a real modem. In reality, the BBS is actually talking to a terminal program running in the PC, which is in turn connected to the user who has telnetted in. The secret is in the several communication pins in the RS232 adaptor. The input pins on either end of the cable are attached to the output pins on the other end. The pin that is used by the computer to say that it's ready to talk to the modem (called Data Terminal Ready) is connected on the other end to the pin used by the modem to tell the computer it is ready to go (the Data Set Ready), as well as the pin that the modem uses to tell the computer that it has gone online (the Data Carrier Detect). So, when the user telnetting to the LINUX machine logs on and (automatically) runs minicom, the Commodore BBS program is immediately fooled into thinking that it has received a call, and goes online. When the telnet user exits their session, minicom stops running and essentially "drops carrier" on the Commodore, forcing it to go offline again and await another "call". Of course, there are still many glitches to work out, based on incompatibility between the character sets used by the machines. Commodore graphics is still unviewable for the moment, and our standard upload/download protocols like Punter and Xmodem don't seem very happy with this set-up, but if you can stand ASCII, and like to play those famous Commodore online games like Empire, Murder Motel and so forth, then you may appreciate the potential of this rather interesting project. - Bo Zimmerman