[Coco] Internet/BBS connectivity via Coco1

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Derek (and others),
> DriveWire4 will do the same thing in emulating the modem. If you have no need for drivewire, then this is the perfect idea
> But I think the real problem is not the means of connection.... but where to connect to.
> I can make internet connections on my Coco all day long... but I have no idea of an address to connect them to.
> What is really needed is the actual telnet addresses of internet BBSs to connect to.

This is a good place to start:

http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/

> I've never really messed with telnet so I know little about it. A good detailed description of how to connect, where to connect, and what to do after you've connected would really be benificial.

NitrOS9 includes a telnet client for DW that is appropriate for
connecting to most telnet based services (remote shells, mostly).  The
telnet client opens a *raw* socket to the remote host, i.e. DriveWire
does not do any processing on the data passing through, it just moves
bytes back and forth verbatim.

Telnet BBSes tend to be a bit different than other telnet services.
They like to use a lot of ANSI graphics and fancy screen controls, a
hold over from the BBS glory days I guess.  Since telnet is (mostly)
terminal agnostic, if you connect to such a BBS using the telnet
client then these control codes are going to be delivered to OS9's
current term or win driver and things will be mostly insane.

There is another option that is more appropriate for telnet BBSes.
You can use a traditional telecomm/terminal emulation program such as
Supercom (included on NitrOS9 disks, I think.  It's in the repo at
least).  These programs understand the ANSI nonsense and make the
menus and fullscreen interfaces of the BBS work (usually).

To use these traditional telecom programs (or traditional BBS server
software) with DriveWire, just configure them to use /N instead of /T2
or whatever they default to.  For supercomm, just start it with /N as
an argument:  supercomm /n

The /N devices will map your connection to one of the virtual channels
automatically, so you can start as many instances of a terminal
program as you have channels (by default 14) and connect to different
sites concurrently.  You still use /N as the device for all of them.

The /N devices will act a lot like a Hayes modem.  They understand all
of the standard AT commands.  No particular configuration is
necessary, but if your telecomm program likes to see a certain
response to some AT request, it will most likely get one that makes it
happy.

To connect to your BBS of choice, dial just like a phone number but
use a.b.c.d:e form of IP address and port rather than a phone number.
For example, ATD127.0.0.1:6809   IIRC you can use DNS names too, as
long as they dont start with T or P.. something like that.  Maybe I
just made it ATD and broke T/P for the sake of easier dns.  Can't
recall.

Anyway, this will connect the virtual channel to the remote host and
respond with hayes codes as if dialing a phone.  In this mode,
DriveWire will process the telnet protocol for you so your terminal
program should get a data stream very similar to being connected via a
real modem.

To disconnect, log off using the BBS interface or just close your
terminal program.  There is no support for a hayes style escape
sequence to reenter command mode.  The virtual modem will reenter
command mode if the remote side disconnects however.

I think that's mostly it.

-Aaron