[Coco] NitrOS9 with Deluxe RS232 Pak

[Barry Nelson]

 If you will be running Drivewire, I would suggest not bothering with the RS232 pak or a driver  for it, but instead, I would inetd and telnet to your CoCo over the network. You connect with telnet to port 6809 on the host running Drivewire, and the connection is forwarded to the CoCo and you get a login prompt from there. The default is to just press enter for a root login. This is MUCH easier to setup than messing with 25 pin RS232 port wiring. The Drivewire doesn't need the RS232 pak, it uses the 4 pin serial port on the back of the CoCo.

The inetd program is included in the sourceforge NitrOS9 Drivewire image at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nitros9/files/releases/v3.3.0/disks/nos96809l2v030300coco3_dw.dsk/download

If I recall, the defaults on this image allow you to start inetd by running:
inetd &
Then you can:
telnet drivewirehost 6809
and login with a blank user name.

Here is a transcript of a short session from my local network to my CoCo 3 (PS: Before you ask or try my firewall blocks internet access, most other peoples firewalls will too, by default).

$ telnet 192.168.0.57 6809
Trying 192.168.0.57...
Connected to dynamic25.s2.abcm.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
DriveWire Telnet Server 4.3.1g

NitrOS-9/6809 Level 2 V3.3.0 on the Tandy Color Computer 3  2015/02/09 01:27:55


User name?: 

Process #04 logged on   2015/02/09 01:28:04
Welcome!

Welcome to NitrOS-9 Level 2!


Shell+ v2.2a 15/02/09 01:28:05

{N2|04}/DD:cd sys

{N2|04}/DD/SYS:list inetd.conf
# inetd configuration file format:
# ListenPort <server opts>,Process,Params
# valid server options are: telnet auth protect banner 
6809 telnet protect banner,login,
8809,httpd,

{N2|04}/DD/SYS:ex
Connection closed by foreign host.


Instructions for configuring telnet to the CoCo. 

http://sourceforge.net/p/drivewireserver/wiki/Using_DriveWire/#inetd 

inetd
If you are interested in using your CoCo as an internet server, for instance to telnet into your CoCo to a shell or BBS, or to run a web server on your CoCo, then you will probably want to use the inetd utility included with DriveWire. 
inetd is a special daemon that works much like inetd on a *nix system. It is a 'super server' in that it listens to many ports and can start the appropriate service based on which port a client connects to. For instance, you may want to provide a BBS on port 6809, an OS-9 shell on port 6800, and a quick listing of the proc command on port 6801. Any OS-9 program which uses standard input and output can be used as an internet server with inetd. 
inetd.conf
You configure inetd's behavior using the file SYS/inetd.conf. Each line in this file corresponds to one service that you want to provide with your CoCo. There are several fields of information seperated by a comma. Some fields are optional but you must always have the correct number of commas on each line. 
The fields in inetd are: server_options,program,parameters 
Server options must begin with a port number. This may be followed by one or more optional flags which tell the DriveWire server more about how you'd like it to present this service to internet clients. Program and parameters are standard OS-9 paths and arguments. 
For example, to provide the output of "dir /DD/CMDS" on port 1234, inetd.conf would contain a line like: 
1234,dir,/DD/CMDS
To provide an OS-9 shell to telnet users on port 6809, you might add this line: 
6809 telnet auth protect banner,shell,
There are a couple things worth mentioning in this second example. First, even though we do not need any additional parameters to shell, we still must put the second comma after the program field. Second, in this example we've used a number of optional flags after the port number. These flags help to make the shell work better for telnet users and also help to keep out unwanted users. You may specify any or all of these flags on any line in inetd.conf. 
optional flags for inetd.conf
telnet - Process telnet control characters prior to passing data to the CoCo. Useful to make interactive programs (shells, BBS, etc) work more like they should. If your OS-9 program understands telnet itself, or if you want a raw data path, do not specify this option. It is a helper mode to allow existing software to work better. 
banner - Present a banner file (specified in config.xml) to the client prior to connecting with the OS-9 system. 
protect - Use the IP address and geolocation banning system to prevent unwanted clients from connecting. This prevents the unwanted sources from ever talking with the CoCo, they are blocked in the DriveWire server prior to connection.
 
On Jun 18, 2015, at 4:58 PM, coco-request at maltedmedia.com wrote:

> Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 13:37:26 -0500
> From: Ron Klein <ron at kdomain.org>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] NitrOS9 with Deluxe RS232 Pak
> Message-ID:
> 	<CANgnoUVc8UrfQKrPZte28jq_cq83JLSt8E7J9JxLGTo-Vs5azA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Hi Barry,
> 
> I fully intend to use Drivewire with NitrOS9 so thank you for providing
> that link.  I should probably use this build version of NitrOS9 to add your
> RS232 driver to.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -Ron