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0 pointsEvanAnderson10mo ago0 comments

I'm reading it as they used the IBM AT as a serial terminal, running QMODEM as the terminal emulator, for a Linux host that was connected to the Internet via modem.

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yusina10mo ago

Saying "share the internet connection" is quite a stretch though if you just had a terminal connection to some other host which then connected to the internet. I'd associate "sharing a connection" with some (perhaps NATed) IP routing. And they mention NAT, thus my question.

EvanAndersonOP10mo ago

Based on their mention of "coax" I bet they have a Linux box w/ a modem doing dial-up PPP to an ISP, and a 10Base-2 NIC that they used to attach another PC. The Linux box was doing IP masquerading (NAT) to share the PPP connection w/ the machine(s) on the 10Base-2 LAN.

Having the IBM AT a a serial terminal would let somebody run CLI-based software on the Linux box (like Lynx, an IRC client, FTP, etc). You'd just be using a shell account on the Linux box.

I did stuff like this in the early 90s at home and later at a company I worked at (sharing a single dial-up connection over 10Base-2 with 5-ish Windows 95 PCs).

grgbrn10mo ago

Maybe your association would be different / the terminology would make more sense if you were online in the early 90s?

BUT, it was definitely possible to do what you're describing with some combination of a dialup shell account, a terminal program like qmodem and something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slirp

EvanAndersonOP10mo ago

I think running SLiRP on the Linux box and a SLIP client on the IBM AT was probably a stretch, but it's certainly possible. At that point it probably would have made more sense to grab an NE2000 NIC and throw the IBM AT onto the coax network.

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yusina10mo ago

I was online in the 90s and I did have a 286 PC. Thus my questions. (That PC was running DOS and didn't have much of a chance to have IP connectivity.)

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yusina10mo ago

EvanAndersonOP10mo ago

Having the IBM AT a a serial terminal would let somebody run CLI-based software on the Linux box (like Lynx, an IRC client, FTP, etc). You'd just be using a shell account on the Linux box.

I did stuff like this in the early 90s at home and later at a company I worked at (sharing a single dial-up connection over 10Base-2 with 5-ish Windows 95 PCs).

grgbrn10mo ago

Maybe your association would be different / the terminology would make more sense if you were online in the early 90s?

BUT, it was definitely possible to do what you're describing with some combination of a dialup shell account, a terminal program like qmodem and something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slirp

EvanAndersonOP10mo ago

2 more replies

yusina10mo ago

I was online in the 90s and I did have a 286 PC. Thus my questions. (That PC was running DOS and didn't have much of a chance to have IP connectivity.)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse