There's a way to create an Incoming Connection somewhere in Windows Networking that I haven't done in a while, plus I use 2003 and Ethernet but it must be much of the same. I have used this remotely to get free internet in the city when working away from home in places that have no internet but have phone lines.

This article seems to cover it; http://www.techrepublic.com/article/configure … e-a-vpn-server/
Skip the text, the screenies at the bottom say it all really. Those images rate a good point in that you might be able to use a LapLink kind of deal, like a Serial or Parallel cable directly between both machines, though it will be slower than hell!

I doubt you'd get it working like you suggest though, the system would have to be at the end of a phone line unless you could somehow emulate the exchange in the middle. I suppose you could try and make the 486 not wait for the dial tone, but I do not see it working - still, I want to know if it does. Good luck.

Edit: You might have to go into the settings for the WiFi connection and find the box labelled something like "Allow other computers to connect to the internet through this connection" before it will share the internet with you though, assuming it works at all.

I HAVE done direct modem-to-modem connections between two computers before. But, this was while using terminal programs on both ends where I could manually command the receiving modem to answer with no incoming ring signal. The most I was able to do with that setup though was transfer files from one computer to the other (It's how I backed up the hard drive on an old 286 portable). I imagine such a connection would never go beyond the confines of the terminal programs, and wouldn't work for bridging a wifi connection.

As for setting up a direct dialup connection between two computers for the purposes of sharing the wifi on the laptop with the laptop functioning as a server proper...I agree that getting the modem on the laptop to answer with no incoming ring signal may be difficult. I imagine I'll probably need a special program on it with a big "answer" button I'd have to manually click after the 486 dials. Getting the 486 to dial with no dial tone will be easy, at least. I anticipate if this is possible, it'll be more involved than just setting up connection bridging in XP.

I wonder what would happen if you set both modems to Pulse Dial mode? I am not clear on how this actually works but being a much more primitive technology it might dodge some of the things the system checks for before answering. I doubt it will help, but it may be enough to hoodwink it and is certainly worth a shot if nothing else works. Just a random thought.

Some internet providers still provide dialup as a backup service to their broadband complimentary. You might check with yours.

Rhuwyn wrote:

Some internet providers still provide dialup as a backup service to their broadband complimentary. You might check with yours.

I no longer have landline phone service, so this option (As well as NetZero) would not be available to me.

Oh ok. That makes sense. There are some folks that have done similar things for the Sega Dreamcast with the build in modem to keep playing Dreamcast games online even though the platform is dead.

Here they use a router and a Phone Line Similater to accomplish this.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=895880

Here someone wrote a program called PC-DC with the idea of bridging a PC with a Dreamcast but it should work for another machine with a Dial-Up Modem as well.
http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/guides/pc-dc-s … ver-guide-win7/

Here someone used a Raspberry Pi with a USB modem as a bridge as well.
http://www.retrocollect.com/News/get-your-seg … spberry-pi.html

I've done this in the past, to simulate a dial-in server for a DVR (ReplayTV) that required a landline to obtain program data, in a place where there was high-speed internet but no landline.

http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/ReplayTV-FREESCO

Basically you use an old floppy-based Linux distribution, that you run in a VMWare virtual machine, which connects to an external serial modem connected to the computer and acts as a dialup server, then routes the incoming modem connection to the actual internet connection of the computer. Sounds complicated, but it isn't. IIRC I used a standard external 56k serial modem to act as the dial-in modem. The caveat is that the computer you will use as a host for the router must have a serial port. If you feel adventurous and the computer has a floppy drive it can boot from, you can skip the virtual machine and run FreeSCO directly, as long as the network card in the computer is supported by it.

(note that the download link on that page is broken; you can get it at http://xmltv.org/alpha/FreeSCO_vmware.zip )

Alright, this is looking to be a bit more complicated than I was anticipating. Last night, I tried to at least get the modems talking to each other using HyperTerminal as I have done in the past. Unfortunately, this failed, neither of them would detect the carrier. I am presuming one or both of the specific modems being used in this setup requires voltage on the line to connect, and the few times in the past I have successfully done this I just got lucky having both modems not needing the line voltage. Inducing line voltage may be the easy part though, I THINK I can do it using an old deactivated MagicJack dongle with a Y-splitter in the middle, something to try anyway.

As for figuring out how to get the modem to answer with no incoming ring signal, this remains the biggest obstacle to setting up this virtual dialup server. I MIGHT be able to build a crude ring signal generator using a couple AC transformers to step down from 120VAC to 12VAC, then back up to ~90VAC, but I'd then have to find a way to keep this ring signal from feeding back into the MagicJack and the modem that is dialing out. Maybe if I'm quick enough with my hands I can simply connect and disconnect phone cables as needed to achieve this, but I don't know how well the timing would work out.

I bought one of these ringing circuit board kits for solder practice a while ago. It never occurred to me that it might have practical uses beyond theatrical effects.

I setup a dialup server on a w2k box before, I don't recall how I did it, but it worked with my dreamcast.
Might be worth a looking into.

The Dreamcast community has indeed done quite a bit of work on this, the most advanced being "DreamPI" which runs on a raspberry pi.

I'd encourage you to do a google search for "pc to dc server" and play around with that.
The line voltage situation heavily depends on the modems used but really all it takes is a 9v battery (sometimes two for 18v), a resistor and a small capacitor.

It's entirely possible to fake a local dial up connection.

You'll need to disable carrier detect on both ends, and using hyperterminal manually call a phone number on the client, and then manually answer on the server.

I used that mechanism for a Windows 95 or 98 local area network for a good year and a half ages ago. Pretty slow though.

keenerb wrote:

It's entirely possible to fake a local dial up connection.

You'll need to disable carrier detect on both ends, and using hyperterminal manually call a phone number on the client, and then manually answer on the server.

I used that mechanism for a Windows 95 or 98 local area network for a good year and a half ages ago. Pretty slow though.

Yes, I have done this before as well. Unfortunately, one or both of the modems I am currently using (Presumably the one in the laptop) requires line voltage to complete the handshake. Without it, there is no way to get the two modems talking to each other by directly connecting them together. Besides, as already mentioned, using HyperTerminal in this manner would provide no means for then routing the traffic onto the LAN and ultimately the internet, which is what I am trying to achieve.

I tested my hypothesis of using a MagicJack dongle to provide line voltage, but it doesn't seem to be good enough. I can hear the modems begin to negotiate the connection, but then crap out without completing the handshake. My guess is the current isn't high enough to run both modems simultaneously. This makes sense, considering the MagicJack is designed to have only a single device plugged into it.

I found a (relatively) inexpensive phone line simulator on eBay, I'll probably just go ahead and order one of those.

It's worth searching for a cheap telephone exchange - that way the modems can dial properly. That's the way I tested modems when I used them professionally.

The cheap exchange I used wasn't perfect, and occasionally needed to be powered off and on, but it worked quite well.

Well, I managed to snag one of those Viking phone line simulators off eBay for a good price, and it arrived today.

My Fujitsu C500 tablet has both a modem and wifi, so I set it up as a dial-up server and connected the two computers together using the Viking box.

The 486 dialed, and the tablet answered.

Success! My own working dial-up internet server for my vintage computers!

Now to wait the several millennia or so it'll take to download Firefox... 🤣

It's not 100% perfect though. Every now and then it does like to randomly disconnect, but I don't know if this is the Viking box or the tablet causing the dropped connections. Something I'll just have to keep an eye on.

Pretty cool.

torindkflt wrote:

Now to wait the several millennia or so it'll take to download Firefox... 🤣

🤣 brings me back to the late '90s when I downloaded ZipSlack over a 28.8kbps connection. ZipSlack is a version of Slackware Linux that is small enough to fit on a 100MB zip drive, and compressed it was about 40MB. It took about a day and a half, and I had to actively "maintain" the connection all that time because my ISP would drop a user that was "inactive" for 3h. So I had to make sure that every 2h or so I opened a few random websites in my browser. 😀