3 ms·

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.

by yusina 1y 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.

grgbrn 1y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slirp
- EvanAnderson 1y 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.
  - grgbrn 1y ago
    Oh I wasn't trying to reverse-engineer his network from that comment, just saying that this was a thing that was possible and that people did at the time. I agree it's highly unlikely that the AT was running slirp. Wikipedia says an AT was a 286, so it wouldn't have been linux. Not even sure what the options would have been. Minix? Xenix?
    - EvanAnderson 1y ago
      Xenix definitely ran on a 286. I can't say re: Minix-- I never have used it (though I probably should just to have the experience). I believe there was a Crynwr SLIP packet driver.
    - spauldo 1y ago
      QModem ran on DOS, so the AT wasn't running UNIX. It's almost certainly being used as a terminal. I can confirm that they did run Minix OK, although I remember the network support was iffy at best. We never got it to work at any rate. XENIX would have been hard to get your hands on. I think QNX would run on an AT as well, although my memory might be playing tricks on me there.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    Most network software for DOS was LAN-oriented, like Novell or NetBIOS. Just drive mapping and printer redirection. I'm not aware of a TCP/IP connectivity suite being available for DOS in that era, and I'm not sure how it would have worked given that DOS provided no networking libraries to hook into.
- yusina 1y 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.)
EvanAnderson 1y 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).

by yusina 1y ago

grgbrn 1y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slirp

EvanAnderson 1y 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.
- grgbrn 1y ago
  Oh I wasn't trying to reverse-engineer his network from that comment, just saying that this was a thing that was possible and that people did at the time. I agree it's highly unlikely that the AT was running slirp. Wikipedia says an AT was a 286, so it wouldn't have been linux. Not even sure what the options would have been. Minix? Xenix?
  - EvanAnderson 1y ago
    Xenix definitely ran on a 286. I can't say re: Minix-- I never have used it (though I probably should just to have the experience). I believe there was a Crynwr SLIP packet driver.
  - spauldo 1y ago
    QModem ran on DOS, so the AT wasn't running UNIX. It's almost certainly being used as a terminal. I can confirm that they did run Minix OK, although I remember the network support was iffy at best. We never got it to work at any rate. XENIX would have been hard to get your hands on. I think QNX would run on an AT as well, although my memory might be playing tricks on me there.
- spauldo 1y ago
  Most network software for DOS was LAN-oriented, like Novell or NetBIOS. Just drive mapping and printer redirection. I'm not aware of a TCP/IP connectivity suite being available for DOS in that era, and I'm not sure how it would have worked given that DOS provided no networking libraries to hook into.
yusina 1y 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.)

EvanAnderson 1y 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).