31 Jul
2022
31 Jul
'22
10:46 p.m.
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2022 14:57:07 -0700
From: Ali via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
I agree that is exactly the behavior I want. However,
none of the devices
that have been suggested seem to do that i.e. connecting a Lantronix UDS1100
to the dumb terminal does not provide a usable telnet CLIENT interface. The
device has been designed to act as a telnet SERVER to expose the host
(i.e. RAID Controller interface) to the outside via the telnet
protocol. Again for most uses this is all you need. You would then use
whatever modern device you have with a telnet client to connect to your
device. I am throwing a monkey wrench in it by trying to use a 1980s dumb
terminal as my I/O device. :)
As we discussed any half decent system (a 486, SPARC,
etc.) can provide the
intelligence to do this. I was hoping there was a purpose built box that
could be used in a turnkey manner and be hidden away out of sight for my
use. Failing that rolling a Pi system w/ serial HAT or a USB to RS232 adapter
maybe the cheapest option as you suggested.
What you have been describing, and what no one else seems to have twigged to,
is what we called a TIP ("terminal interface processor") or EtherTIP (because
it sat directly on the 3Mbit/10Mbit Ethernet, unlike the ARPANET TIPs that sat
on a 56Kbit leased line). There were dozens of these scattered across the
Stanford campus when I arrived there at the start of the autumn quarter.
These were Cisco boxes (although they predated 'cisco Systems by a few years)
configured with one or more RS-232 interface cards which IIRC supported 16
lines per card, and sat on the same Multibus backplane as the SUN-1 processor
board which ran the Cisco software (later called "IOS") and the Ethernet
interface card (which attached to the thicknet cables with a vampire tap).
Later versions, of course, used thinnet (i.e. 10base2), and even later used
10baseT. The box was the same as the Cisco routers with the addition of
serial cards.
The user sitting at the dumb terminal typed a carriage return, the TIP woke up,
and the user saw a prompt for a hostname on the command line. (Other commands
were available, but the default was to treat any unrecognized command as a
hostname.) The TIP would then open a telnet connection to the specified host,
and the user would do whatever she wanted to on the remote box.
Cisco still (I think) sells TIP-style boxes, although they are generally based
on Catalyst designs, since Cisco's engineers were more concerned with making
better routers after a while. You should be able to find a relatively
inexpensive Catalyst type box on ePay. Put it on your LAN, hook your dumb
terminal to it, and Robert's your male parental sibling.
Rich