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Notice: In some of the previous chapters, I announced
my plans to use an old i286/12 MHz box,
having only 1 MB of RAM, running DOS 5.0, as a
'telnet client' computer. That box has a network
card so I would like to 'connect' to the
BBS from that one 'telnet client' box. If that
succeeds, it would be a good preparation for
installing another LinFBB (in the local school
club), where several old 286 computers will be also
available. It would be nice to offer more than
one student-amateur the opportunity to 'connect' the
BBS simultaneously, using a bunch of vintage
'telnet client' DOS computers.
2003-06-30
First of all, I have been looking for networking software that
does not require much of hardware resources. Several hams
keep advising me to try this or that way, but Jose, CO2JA,
sent me his distribution copy of NCSA Telnet utility.
According to its own howto document, that is
actually a "NCSA Telbin DOS client", being "used
at The University of Port Elizabeth (Sep '94)". So far
about software's earlier "official" usage.
Well, it seems that NCSA TCP/IP kernel only runs on packet
drivers now. That's why I looked for appropriate packet drivers
for my old ISA network card, equipped with the UMC's UM9003AF
chip. CZ20000.COM packet driver seemed to be the
most suitable one.
Before implementing the driver I also needed the proper diagnostic
utility to check and/or modify NIC's IRQ and I/O address in order to avoid
possible hardware conflicts (you know, under DOS it is less easier
to resolve interrupt hardware conflicts case a user has several ISA
cards that are not of P'n'P type /as PCI cards are/). It seemed that
DIAG.EXE ("The Ethernet Adapter Diagnostic Program,
Ver. 2.13" - that comes with E1000 and E2000 series Ethernet cards)
was fully capable to handle my card's parameters, so I choose the
values of IRQ 5 and I/O 320 that weren't occupied by other resources.
Then I could execute the following DOS command:
cz2000 0x60 5 0x320
in order to activate the NIC.
Now the configuration file CONFIG.TEL should be modified
in order to satisfy my particular needs, including local (DOS client) and
remote (Linux server) IP addresses etc. In a couple of minutes
that was finished so the main executable TELBIN.EXE
successfully started running on my old 286 DOS box.
If you want, you may put cz2000 0x60 5 0x320 and
telbin commands into a dedicated TELNET.BAT
file in order to make your telnet utility easier to activate. Should
you plan to use your old DOS box for only accessing the
Linux FBB server, both lines may be added to the
AUTOEXEC.BAT start up file.
2003-07-20
A "YL" (the amateur "young lady") from the UK, Paula Dowie G8PZT, has
suggested me to try her own product, XROUTER MULTI-PROTOCOL
ROUTER, that is "an AX25 and IP packet router for the amateur packet
radio network, using a standard PC and DOS". Actually, it seems that
Xrouter has much more functions that I need now, but anyway it was
intriguing to test its features, in order to connect LinFBB via LAN. Paula
said that "Xrouter
http://pzt.org.uk/software/software.htm will run on a 286 DOS machine,
and will act as a telnet client". She added that, Xrouter's "outgoing text is
composed in a one line buffer, so the receive window is only 22 lines".
According to Paula's email signature, seems she's very active in
helping to the amateur digital radio activities:
> Packet: G8PZT @ GB7PZT.#24.GBR.EU (44.131.91.2) [Kidderminster]
> Email: g8pzt@blueyonder.co.uk _/\_
> GB7PZT: 01562-745527 24h 300-33,600 8,n,1 ()
> Software: XServ BBS, Xrouter, PEARL off-line-reader. />
> Web Site: www.pzt.org.uk (also www.qsl.net/g8pzt) ===>--->>\----
> Telnet: (BBS): gb7pzt.dyndns.org:88 and 44.131.91.2:23
> Telnet: (KIDDER): g8pzt.ath.cx and 44.131.91.245
> HTTP: http://g8pzt.ath.cx/ and http://44.131.91.245
So, I went to visit the site to see what it was about and to download the
package. There were two compressed files, rout172.zip and rout176c.zip
so I decided to get both of them (the latter is the newer one, 28/7/02 but
the other one is also not so old, 15/11/01).
According to sysop's manual XROUTER.TXT the ethernet driver
allows connection with Windows, Linux, NOS and BPQ. At the moment I am
primarily interested in connections to LinFBB (and maybe to WinFBB too).
Xrouter's hardware requirements include at least one COM port or Ethernet
card and I used only the Ethernet card for the first time because I am not
going to use Xrouter for anything else but for accessing LinFBB over my
home network.
As described in the previous section, related to "NCSA Telbin DOS client",
I have managed to activate my NIC using the command:
cz2000 0x60 5 0x320
After doing that, there was a requirement to use the software component
ETHDRV.EXE (supplied with Xrouter), like this:
ethdrv 125
where "125" stands for a software interrupt in the range 60 - 127 (125
is used as an example that, BTW, works here without any problem). On the
other side, the same software interrupt must be defined as the INTNUM
parameter, that is a part of the INTERFACE block within
XROUTER.CFG configuration file.
And, finally, there was a command:
xrouter
to activate the main executable. As mentioned before, all three lines above
may be incorporated into an XROUTER.BAT (or whatever similar)
batch file to make user's life easier.
Well, although in my case the first two lines responded in positive manner,
the last one rather suggested that I had some errors in the configuration.
The nice thing is that errors are reported with a detail such the exact line
of XROUTER.CFG where an error is made. In fact, Xrouter is able
to support lots of various "ports" and has a plenty of other features, so it
was not easy to solve the config issues I faced to. With some help from
other hams I managed to adapt the following configuring blocks:
INTERFACE=8
TYPE=EXTERNAL
PROTOCOL=ETHER
MTU=1600
INTNUM=125
ENDINTERFACE
and
PORT=6
ID=Ethernet LAN
INTERFACENUM=8
CHANNEL=A
FRACK=1000
RESPTIME=200
MAXFRAME=7
PACLEN=240
ENDPORT
So far, so good. Now I got Xrouter's main screen from where I could enter
telnet and other commands. But I was still not able to connect to the LinFBB.
Finally, I got the suggestion to reconfigure another Xrouter's system file,
IPROUTE.SYS. It seemed that the missing part was to change the
default route, as follows:
route default 6 * d
Then I became capable to access my LinFBB server.
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