Note that this forum is about "Getting old DOS games working on modern hardware" as per the description. For old hardware ask in Marvin -- Marvin, the Paranoid Android

I thought Terminate was the go to terminal sofrware?

collector wrote:

Note that this forum is about "Getting old DOS games working on modern hardware" as per the description. For old hardware ask in Marvin -- Marvin, the Paranoid Android

Oh sorry.
I did read it and i somehow understood it includes other software than games as well.

Can it be moved somehow?

appiah4 wrote:

I thought Terminate was the go to terminal sofrware?

As far as i quickly looked at it, it doesn't seem to support telnet, packet drivers etc.?

GigAHerZ wrote:

Hi, […]
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Hi,

I'm in a search for ultimate dos terminal application to use on my dos machines.
I would like it to support serial communication and also packet drivers and telnet support.
I would also like it to support all kinds of file transfer protocols like xmodem, ymodem and zmodem.

The mTCP collection contains pretty nice telnet application, but it doesn't support serial communication and it lacks support for zmodem. (It does support x- and ymodem)
I have found MS-Kermit ( http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/mskermit.html ) which seems to be super expert tool that's somewhat hard to use. I have managed to use it to connect to BBSes with proper terminal type so it looks okay everywhere. What i have been unable to do is to transfer files with it.

So any suggestions? Does someone know a good terminal application i could try out? Or maybe someone can instruct me a bit about MS-Kermit how to make it work. It looks like it can do anything, you just need to know the right keywords...

Thank you!

For serial ports I use an older version of Procomm. Version 2.4.3 runs great on any DOS machine I've ever used, including the PCjr.

For historical context ...

mTCP Telnet does not support Zmodem because it really doesn't add anything over Ymodem. The big advantage of Zmodem was the speed, which was obtained by using a sliding window. Over a serial port this was a big deal; even with X or Y modem using 1K packets waiting for the ACK for each packet caused a lot of dead time on the line. In the year 2018 Ymodem with 1K packets is about all you need, especially over Ethernet. If you are really looking for speed, use FTP instead. I added X and Y modem to mTCP Telnet for the occasional "Wow, let's demonstrate how to download a file ye olde way" moment. (It's patterned after Procomm 2.4.3, including the noises it makes.)

TCP/IP is already doing all of the error checking and re-transmitting and it provides a sliding window. If I was slightly more ambitious I would implement YModem-G, which does away with error checking and ACK packets. The problem is that it is hard to find server implementations to test against. And it still can't approach the speeds of native FTP.

mbbrutman, thank you for your reply.

First of all i want to really thank you for the great work you've done on mTCP. It's an amazing collection of software that works right out of the box with minimum configuration. Thank you!

The main reason for ZModem really is that there are BBS'es out there that only support ZModem and nothing else, unfortunately. Many give different options, but for example digisoft.club only support ZModem.

I have ordered USB->COM adapter and other bits and pieces so i could be able to emulate hayes modem on my modern PC and connect to it from my old PC over COM port. There are many terminal programs that should work with that setup, but we'll see...

Moved.

The "Zmodem or else" thing is kind of irritating. Xmodem was universal. Even Ymodem and Ymodem batch are pretty universal. Zmodem came along fairly late, and there are computers out there that are just too small for it. For something like a C64 running at 1200 bps using Zmodem is like trying to kill an ant with a sledgehammer.

Kermit, my friend. It's a beautiful thing!

gdjacobs wrote:

Kermit, my friend. It's a beautiful thing!

I'm aware of Kermit and mentioned it in initial post. Can you point out, how i could use XYZmodem with kermit over TCP?

Kermit uses Kermit. I'm not sure if external tools can be used for transfer. The primary advantage of Kermit is tunability for different combinations of connection speed, connection reliability, and underlying hardware performance. Not everything will work with something older, like a 286, but Kermit probably will.

gdjacobs wrote:

Kermit uses Kermit.

This doesn't make it the ultimate DOS terminal...

I've tried MS-Kermit, as i have described in the first post. Terminal itself is fine, but it doesn't seem to have any support for any XYZmodem protocol... And all external XYZmodem applications i've found, that can be used with MS-Kermit, none of them support TCP, but require serial connection.

GigAHerZ wrote:

.. And all external XYZmodem applications i've found, that can be used with MS-Kermit, none of them support TCP, but require serial connection.

I'm guessing you might not have used PCs and DOS through the early 90s? Point-to-point serial file-transfer applications (like Z-Modem) cover an earlier and more inferior branch of networking compared what TCP-IP offers. In other words, you don't need Z-Modem if your data is already moving across a TCP-IP network, which takes care of packetizing, routing, error-checking, retransmission, and reconstruction.

Expecting Z-Modem to support TCP-IP is like asking why a circa-1940's propeller bi-plane doesn't have engine mounts or fuel connectors for your Boeing 777 engines.

Even though the Internet did exist during the reign of DOS, it was almost exclusively accessed via *nix systems operated by organizations (not home users): universities, researchers, and government think tanks - and perhaps some keen libraries. Early-adopters could use their home PCs to "leap-frog" onto the Internet by first dialing into their work or university's available modem lines - and from there use a *nix command line to telnet, email, or gopher. But again - this was a thin fraction of PC users.

Back then, before the days of MS Windows 3.x and commercial ISPs, the closest home PC users got to the Internet was dialing into BBSs supporting FIDOnet or dialing into curated services like Prodigy, which perhaps eventually supported real email (SMTP/POP/IMAP) in its later years - but again, users dialed in via the serial modem. Even when Windows 3.x came out and users got a TCP-IP stack via Trumpet Winsock, they had to establish a point-to-point connection with their ISP via their serial modems (see TCP-IP over PPP).

TLDR; DOS and TCP-IP-based networking application never mixed because DOS didn't have a TCP-IP stack nor were commercial ISPs available during those early years. Commercial ISPs, Windows 3.x, and Trumpet Winsock ushered in the TCP-IP and Internet era for home PC users.

krcroft,

Theres a software package from Microsoft called "Microsoft Network Client 3.0". It's for dos and supports TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS resolver etc. One can even mount samba shares (from Windows 10, if you enable samba 1.0 support in it!) as network drives purely in DOS.
So saying it's not a thing in DOS officially is wrong.

The other part - we have mbbrutman's telnet client that can do X- and Ymodem over TCP. Therefore it's possible, though it may not have existed back then.

And i explained also earlier, that my need for Zmodem is not because of Zmodem's protocol benefits, but requirements that some BBSes don't support anything else.

Based on those things, i hope it's not a surprise this thread even exists - if TCP networks would have existed everywhere during that time, every terminal program would support it...

Those microsoft TCP tools were released with Windows NT 4.0, so '96; several years after the reign of pure DOS. The early web (and AOL!) was already available to home PC users who were using Windows 3.x and even Windows 95 to dial-up-access the web.

The BBSs die off was still underway. Many sysops had shutdown their BBSs when user access fell off a cliff.
But even then, the BBS world remained 100% separate from the web and underlying tcp protocols. You still dialed up a BBS with your serial modem.

The concept of BBSs migrating to TCP was not a thing - DOS authors of BBSing software saw their license revenue streams dry up and moved onto greener pastures. They certainly weren't dumping labour hours into shoehorning TCP support into their DOS BBS programs and tools!

Last time I played with them a couple years back, most retro BBSs offering a decent amount of files also offered ftp access (I suppose those TCP-BBSs you're interested in don't? you could always just try to connect to port 22 with an ftp client.. might get lucky).

Client side, I used DOSBox to convert serial commands to telnet, and was able to access them using Terminate 5.0 and move files using my favorite Zmodem Moby Turbo executable. Again... these programs are simply exchanging content over a serial interface, and dosbox is relaying the results over tcp/ip. I recall the transfers were brutally slow; perhaps 5 or 6KB/s.. it was nostalgic but the combersome BBS navigation quickly reminded me why I also was so quick to abandon almost a decade of BBS'ing for the web back then!

This site describes how to setup DOSBox: http://breakintochat.com/blog/2013/04/17/teln … osbox-emulator/

I realize using DOSBox isn't as direct as pulling files to your retro DOS machine; but it sounds like your retro machine is networked over tcp anyway - so you could use a modern system to haul down your files using DOSBox and then share them via ftp or samba to your retrobox.

Cheers.

krcroft,

Thanks...

I have USB->COM adapter on the way so i can emulate hayes modem with my modern computer and trick my old one to think it's connected to the actual modem.

So if i understand correctly you are also not aware of any DOS terminal program supporting ZModem over TCP/IP stack? I'm in a search for a terminal program, that supports all kinds of connections and also all kinds of file transfer protocols... mTCP's telnet is super close to this one.

GigAHerZ wrote:

So if i understand correctly you are also not aware of any DOS terminal program supporting ZModem over TCP/IP stack? I'm in a search for a terminal program, that supports all kinds of connections and also all kinds of file transfer protocols... mTCP's telnet is super close to this one.

I'm not, but then again my timeline from that era is a one way ticket away from the hardware; I've gone pure emulation for retro fun.

I would similarly approach it from an emulation angle - using DOSBox to perform the serial to telnet translation, which opens up your software options to over a decade worth of native DOS serial tools (like all of the programs mentioned above.. terminate, zmodem moby turbo, kermit, telix, telemate, and so on).

I think there are linux GPL zmodem over tcp tools - like sz and rz. Maybe someone's compiled those for DOS, if you don't want to use DOSBox?

I'm pretty sure sz and rz only operate over a serial port, although you can tunnel serial using socat.

Looking at the list at BTTR Software, have you tried CONEX?
https://www.sac.sk/files.php?d=3&p=12