Let's have fun with serial port, or not..

[pif...@gmail.com]

Hello everybody,
I was looking for a "ssh server equivalent" running under freedos and I rediscover "ctty com1" command.
With a serial To IP converter, that makes a part of the job, but, it miss something. When I try To launch editor like freedos "edit", "pico" or "setedit", there is nothing on the serial line...
They work directly with video ram, so for a remote control, it's not printing on the right side...
Is anybody know a simple editor that can do that ? An editor that use "consol fonction" instead of "hardware hack"...
It seems that "Elvis", a vi-like, or "edlin", a sed-like, are able to do that but, I would prefer a notepad-like.
Or is it just thinkable to port "nano" To freedos?

[Jeffrey Plum]

I ran DO for many years, often trying to build text editors under it. " The Craft of Text Editing: Emacs for the Modern World " by Craig A Finseth is a great book for designing text editors. The book " Software Tools in Pascal." by Brian W. Kernighan has a nice editor in it. A web or Usenet search will uncover more resources.

Builtin Dos serial IO is very primitive, often not interrupt driven. True headless use of a DOS machine means creating a complete Serial Shell. You need a program which waits for Serial data input, parses it does some action or loads/runs some other program, then reloads itself. There are better serial drivers for DOS, but they AFAIK are not true Console drivers. They are to improve output to serial devices, not to control the host. Everything assumes a Video display. FreeCom or 4dos might be modified to accept Serial control, but then the driver level stuff is still an issue

If you used a Raspberry Pi as your Internet to serial bridge, you get SSH for free. You also get a debugging platform for your Headless dos box. The Pi could live inside the Dos PC. Others might add full hardware control of the PC. Do so at your own Risk!!!

PowerBasic for DOS has many of the features needed for this job. It has EMS memory access, TSR creation and triggering, DOS software interrupt access, great string handling and other features for this work. FreePascal for DOS may also worh, if your machine can run it.

[Grant Taylor]

On 3/18/19 7:46 PM, pif...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello everybody,

Hi,

> I was looking for a "ssh server equivalent" running under freedos
> and I rediscover "ctty com1" command.

Do you need /Secure/ Shell? Or would telnet suffice?

I think there are telnet servers for DOS.

Do you need /serial/ (COM) port? Or is that just what you tried?

> With a serial To IP converter, that makes a part of the job, but,
> it miss something. When I try To launch editor like freedos "edit",
> "pico" or "setedit", there is nothing on the serial line...

That's not the fault of the serial to IP conversion process. That's the
fault of the program sending output to the display instead of the serial
port.

> They work directly with video ram, so for a remote control, it's not
> printing on the right side...

Yep.

> Is anybody know a simple editor that can do that ? An editor that use
> "consol fonction" instead of "hardware hack"...

I don't know.

> It seems that "Elvis", a vi-like, or "edlin", a sed-like, are able
> to do that but, I would prefer a notepad-like.

Have you tried the venerable WordPerfect?

> Or is it just thinkable to port "nano" To freedos?

I'm sort of surprised that there isn't a *DOS port of nano. I would
/expect/ that such exists.

Have you tried anything like PC Anywhere or Kerberos to remotely control
the machine?

You might also look at how BBS "Door" (games) work. I don't know if
they are coded to work with the serial port or if the "Door" aspect
copies text from the screen (CGA / EGA / VGA) memory to the serial port.

Also, are you working with a physical machine? Or would some type of
emulation work? Something like DOSEMU might work and do what you want
via an SSH connection. (You can even make the ssh connected session
automatically launch DOSEMU.) DOSBox might be another option.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

[Sébastien GUILLAUME]

Hi,
Thanks for your answers.

First point, I won't write a new text editor for DOS, I don't think the world need it. I have tried to build 2 versions of nano.
One with homemade port of ncurses and DJGPP, it was a fail. I think that some environement was missing and nano print a weird and incomplet error message before closing.
Second one with PDCurses, another fail, PDCurses deals directly with video memory.

Second point, I think that "CTTY COM1" is enough for my use. It's a build in command of the standart freedos' interprter. I can use "cd", "md", "del", "dir" and launch some programs. the last things that I need is an editor.

Third point, i'm using real computers without ethernet card and a dedicated Serial to IP converter from Moxa. So I can't use this three solution :
- https://github.com/benjojo/dos_ssh -> it uses gdb remote protocole to connect to qemu and converts video memory to VT100. Here, qemu is the problem.
- http://josh.com/tiny/ sounds interresting but it needs Ip stacks.
- http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?26709-new-FAST-DOS-VNC-like-remote-control-server : it needs Ip stacks to.

Fourth point, I'm a free software lovers. If I can't read the sources, I don't install... So I didn't test WordPerfect, PC Anywhere or Kerberos.

Fifht point, thanks for your advices on technologies (PowerBasic, FreePascal, BBS "Door" games). I don't kno what i'll do with that, I'm a DJGPP user, I'm esitating on give up, make another curses lib or build my own TSR. Any advice?

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/16/19 11:31 AM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> Have you tried anything like PC Anywhere or Kerberos to remotely control
> the machine?

*FacePALM*

I meant Kermit, not Kerberos. Sorry.

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/17/19 12:22 PM, Sébastien GUILLAUME wrote:
> Hi,

Hi,

> Thanks for your answers.

You're welcome.

> Third point, i'm using real computers without ethernet card and a
> dedicated Serial to IP converter from Moxa. So I can't use this three
> solution :
> - https://github.com/benjojo/dos_ssh -> it uses gdb remote protocole to connect to qemu and converts video memory to VT100. Here, qemu is the problem.
> - http://josh.com/tiny/ sounds interresting but it needs Ip stacks.
> - http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?26709-new-FAST-DOS-VNC-like-remote-control-server : it needs Ip stacks to.

You don't need an Ethernet (or other) network card to support serial.

A quick Google search for "DOS IP stack serial" turned up the following:

Link - DOS TCP/IP
- http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/library/network/dostcpip.htm

I'm confident that there is a LOT more. Especially seeing as how there
are a handful TCP/IP stacks from various people (many Hams) to be used
via TNCs over the radio through the serial port.

> Fourth point, I'm a free software lovers. If I can't read the sources,
> I don't install... So I didn't test WordPerfect, PC Anywhere or
> Kerberos.

Aside: I meant to say Kermit, not Kerberos. Sorry for the near term
collision.

Link - The Kermit Project
- http://www.kermitproject.org/index.html

There are also multiple open source implementations of Kerberos.

> Fifht point, thanks for your advices on technologies (PowerBasic,
> FreePascal, BBS "Door" games). I don't kno what i'll do with that,
> I'm a DJGPP user, I'm esitating on give up, make another curses lib
> or build my own TSR. Any advice?

I'm not convinced that there isn't already a solution that will do what
(I think) you want.

[Sébastien GUILLAUME]

Hi,

Many thanks for your links.
I'm discovering Kermit Project and specialy CKermit. It is fascinating. I'll try the DOS version and perhaps build the newer unix version with DJGPP.

Thanks for all.
Bye.

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/18/19 5:59 AM, Sébastien GUILLAUME wrote:
> Hi,

Hi,

> Many thanks for your links.

You're welcome.

> I'm discovering Kermit Project and specialy CKermit. It is
> fascinating. I'll try the DOS version and perhaps build the newer
> unix version with DJGPP.

Good luck.

If you end up creating something new and you're willing to share, please
publish it somewhere so that others can learn about it.

[tom]

This is interesting. Operating Systems without built-in IP stacks. I
remember having to install an IP stack in Amiga Workbench.