#Null Modem Cables

[commodorez]

I have an NCR Tower "16/32" I don't know the exact model/hardware config, and I haven't had any luck finding a service manual for it online. Do you know of any places I could look/people I could ask for help on finding service info? I don't have a terminal for it either, tho I believe I could just hook it up to a usb to db-9 rs232 adapter. (Dunno if it needs a null modem cable or not lol) It's a beautiful machine, (32 MB ram, NCR's in house sysv unix, a 68000 CPU, it's just such a cute little mainframe!)

That's a rare beast.

My usual go-to is bitsavers. Looks like they don't have a ton about the NCR Tower series: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ncr/tower/

I assume you can do okay with an ol' RS232 terminal, especially if it has a DE-9 already. As for null modem, that's also worth trying any time you deal with an unknown serial device. A light box helps too.

I'd post about it on some place like the VCFed forums, #vc on SlashNET via IRC might be good, and the ClassicCMP mailing list, see if anyone has more resources for you.

[lebrickster]

Emulating an old Phone System is Hard

For a moment in time there, I really wanted to get into emulating an old Phone system. Why? Because I wanted to, and I thought it was cool. Being able to use a vintage phone, and use dial up over a serial modem? Sounds awesome! But it's sadly not so simple. My god is it not...

So, I started off with what phone did I want? It was pretty quick to decide for me, as I wanted a phone with ringing bells, that classic look, and a touch tone pad. I went with a Black Model 2500, refurbished, from OldPhoneWorks. This ended up being expensive, but I wanted to sure it was in good shape. I don't regret this purchase, and think it looks great on my desk!

Well, with the phone situation settled, it was time for the modem. I decided to go for a new in the box U.S. Robotics, to ensure I had working drivers and the correct Power Adapter. It does it's job, and is the sort of look I know Modems for. Though the construction isn't great, since I can lift the top back part of it easily, since it doesn't seem to be held down by snaps, or screws.

I then wanted to get something else to go alongside all of this! If you know anything about the history of Club Penguin, you'll know some of it's earliest music came from an Indie band, known as TAS 1000, named after an answering machine they sampled messages from, and made music around. I got a lucky break and managed to find a unit on eBay, which I was so excited about. Keyword being was, but I'll go into that, later. (Too lazy to get it out of the closet for a fresh pic. Cry about it)

To make this all work I needed a way to connect all of it. No service in my area offers standard POTS Copper lines anymore, so I had to look into a VoIP ATA. After talking with someone in a Preservation Discord, they said they had good experience with a Cisco SPA112 VoIP ATA, saying it worked good for faxing, which is similar to internet via a modem. I bought one brand new, to ensure it was unlocked

With the hardware in-place, it was time to select a VoIP service provider. The best one hands down, price and feature wise, is VoIP_MS. They even have a super helpful Wiki with specific instructions on how to setup the SPA112 I chose, which I found super useful!

It was time to assemble it all, and in theory, all was good! But wait! No it wasn't my first snag with with the damn Modem. It would just not install for some reason, and that was down to me being stupid. I had bought this Serial cable because it was cheap. But I failed to notice the part that says Null Modem. This allows computers to talk to each other, but cannot be used to have a computer talk to a serial modem. D'oh.

OK, no problem, buy a new cable, and all is well! And, it was! ...Until it wasn't. I quickly learned that the SPA112 was not at all good for Dial Up, being super unstable. I was kinda warned of this before I had it in, too, but I bought the SPA112 AFTER that was all sent. So, that was one part of the package I wasted my time on, which bummed me out greatly. Sadly, the problems don't end here. The next problem was that the phone would not ring. It can receive calls and make calls fine, but it just won't ring. It turns out those bells demand a ton of power to work right, and the SPA112 just doesn't send enough juice. To fix this problem, I need a Ring Voltage Booster II, which sadly costs 125$, which is super expensive. I will get one eventually, but the cost of this component, and failures outlined so far has driven me to put this on hold for a long time.

And finally, there was the Answering Machine, the part I was most excited about. It was listed as used but working on the listing, which is partially right, but not entirely. You're supposed to be able to record an outgoing message, but do you see how this button is caved in? Sure, I can press it, but it doesn't do anything, strongly indicating it's broken. I can playback tapes, but what use is that if it can't record the outgoing message?

All of these failures broke me, and just made me depressed, tbh. As a result, this setup has gone more or less unused, with the TAS 1000 going into the closest, and me sometimes only calling my mobile phone with the Model 2500 phone, out of boredom. The modem has gone unused, since I don't trust the flaky connection the SPA112 has with it. What am I going to do from here? Well, down the line, I want to replace the SPA112 with a Obihai OBI302. I've been told this unit is a lot more stable for Fax, so it might be what I need to get for a stable modem experience.

I already mentioned the Ring Voltage booster of course, but in terms of the TAS 1000, if I can find another one, I'll jump on it, but chances are, I'll probably jump on a TAS 3000, since those units seem to be a bit more common, and not as much of a pain to find.

Well, that's about all I have to say here. I will revisit this one day, since I don't want it all to entirely go to waste, but the whole situation did frankly break my heart with how it headed, for now.

[stormkeepergu]

Time for another blog post?

I guess it might be! Anyway, the past few days I’ve been looking at stuff for the Pocket 8086 again, mainly stuff that’ll run on it, although I did put all the associated bits for it in a bigger bag, so I’ve got plenty of space now for 2 PicoMEMs, 2 Super I/O cards, 2 external serial modems and documents, a null modem cable that has 9 and 25 pin connectors at both ends, 2 micro USB cables (to…

[hound-dog-development]

C2G 6ft DB9 F-F Null Modem Cable - Black

C2G 6ft DB9 F/F Null Modem Cable – Black

[megid0nt]

RS-232 DTE-DTE connection via null modem cable is transgender yuri

[puppy-linux-official]

You really should use serial over parallel. A null modem cable will let you send files over at like 115200 baud and Windows 98 includes Hyperterminal iirc. (And if for some reason it isn't installed you can poke a simple serial port file transfer bootstrap in in dos mode to get a better terminal emulator over.) Getting a parallel port file transfer thing is gonna be significantly more hellish because they were all extremely proprietary solutions iirc with driver disks that are difficult if not impossible to find (and if you already can't get files onto it, welp.)

alright nerds i need your help getting this piece of shit (affectionate) talking with my other devices

there's an expansion bay for a cd/floppy drive but I have the secondary hard drive adapter instead. Of course it doesn't have any form of radio. My only way in is the rear I/O.

From left to right / top to bottom and in poor image quality:

RJ11 (I have working 2009 laptop with an RJ11 port, and a landline phone system)

Infrared (no compatible hardware)

USB: The drivers aren't installed. I have them in an exe and it's the file i'm trying to send.

Audio mic/headphones/in

Parallel port (i have a 2008 desktop pc with a parallel port but it might be dead, i'll have to check)

What I assume is a proprietary docking station connector

PS/2

VGA

The PC runs windows 98 SE, and it looks like it also has MS-DOS (sorry if i'm saying something stupid, i'm younger than this computer). Other than python 2.3 and winzip, it doesn't look like it has any third-party utility software.

I tried adding a file straight to the hard drive but the connector on the hard drive isn't compatible with my IDE adapter, even though they look very similar (the pins on the HDD are slightly closer together).

Can't open the bios setup because you need a cd for that

my crazy idea is sending the file as audio. I think windows 98 ships with some kind of audio recording software. I can use my modern pc to play the file as audio. The hard part is the trip back. i guess i could use python to read the audio data and convert it back to a file

The two realistic solutions are RJ11 and parallel, but I have no idea how they work or how to use them

Someone who knows more than me about old computers please help

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[swarmik]

Iomega ZIP 100 drives

Thanks to friends of mine, I was able to get two working parallel-port ZIP drives from Iomega. My father used to use these during the 1990s as ZIP disks were popular in offices in Czech Republic. He later switched to an internal ZIP drive connected to IDE when his parallel-port external one died and used it for another 10 years.

I have a few systems where it is not possible to add a network controller so I though that this would be a good device for faster data transfers (compared to a null-modem cable or diskettes) or accessing data larger than the internal hard drives.

It works just fine. The only drawback is that you usually need a 486 system to leverage full speed of the external drive. My 386 laptops do not support the ECP/EPP protocols on the parallel port, so the access speed is significantly limited (150KB/s?). Anyway, it is still convenient enough for running DOS programs straight from the external drive. I am surprised how nice driver support Iomega provided for DOS and Windows 9x. There is even a “guest” driver in a form of a single exe file – just run it and you can immediately access the drive using a newly assigned drive letter.

(original article with hi-res photos)

[koney-scanlines]

$17 PciE sEriaL caRd + $7 nULL Modem cABLE = fiLE tRaNSfeR fUN!

[crashpl]

Ah, yes, the fine art of transferring files between PCs, with no USB, ethernet or CD-ROMs. The glorious speed of 14.4 kilobytes per second reminds me of good ol’ modem times.

...I might look for parallel cable someday.

[hound-dog-development]

C2G 15ft DB9 F-F Null Modem Cable - Black

C2G 15ft DB9 F/F Null Modem Cable – Black

[megid0nt]

This was a thinly veiled excuse to suck my own dick I had two nonstandard DE-9 to rj-45 adapter doodads that I mapped out the pinouts of, plotted a null modem connection between, and wrought a completely nonstandard 3 pin cable to bridge the two. This is a DE-9F to DE-9F gender-changing null modem adapter now.

The snoozerrrrr

(and my cat)

(the ipc's hostname is Snoozer after the hamham)

[trickslong]

Alternative hyperterm

#ALTERNATIVE HYPERTERM SERIAL#

#ALTERNATIVE HYPERTERM PORTABLE#

#ALTERNATIVE HYPERTERM WINDOWS#

StrMessage.Format(strFormat, theApp.GetString(_T( " SerialName"), _T( " COM1"))) ĬString strServerIP = theApp.GetString(_T( " ServerIP"), _T( " 127.0.0.1")) StrFormat.LoadString(IDS_SERIAL_PORT_OPENED) (CSerialPort::FlowControl) theApp.GetInt(_T( " FlowControl"), CSerialPort::NoFlowControl),ĪfxBeginThread(SerialPortThreadFunc, this) (CSerialPort::StopBits) theApp.GetInt(_T( " StopBits"), CSerialPort::OneStopBit), (BYTE)theApp.GetInt(_T( " DataBits"), 8), (CSerialPort::Parity) theApp.GetInt(_T( " Parity"), CSerialPort::NoParity), Switch (theApp.GetInt(_T( " Connection"), 0)) Please check the OnOpenSerialPort and OnCloseSerialPort functions for implementation details. Next, now you can connect/disconnect from your data source. Please check the CConfigureDlg class for implementation details.

#ALTERNATIVE HYPERTERM SERIAL#

How Do I Get Started?įirst, configure the MFC application to get logs from either serial port or TCP/UDP socket connection. Confirmation of the EFTPOS transaction is sent to the store and passed on to the customer in the form of a printed EFTPOS transaction record. Before the EFTPOS customer has had the goods put into a bag, the EFTPOS transaction will be complete. The EFTPOS transaction takes a matter of only a few seconds. Unless there is reason for the EFTPOS transaction not to be completed, the funds will then be transferred between the two accounts. A message is also sent to the customer's bank. When the EFTPOS customer confirms the purchase, either by signature or security PIN, the EFTPOS equipment contacts the store's bank electronically about the transaction. On making a purchase, the EFTPOS customer gives an EFTPOS card to the cashier who inserts it into an on-site EFTPOS machine. For those who do not know, EFTPOS is the method for paying for goods or services without needing to carry cash. The main purpose of this MFC application is to get logs via serial port or UDP socket from embedded systems, such as EFTPOS devices, and it is based on PJ Naughter's CSerialPort and CWSocket classes. You can use IntelliPort to perform the specific tasks described above, but do not attempt to use IntelliPort for more complex communication needs. IntelliPort is designed to be an easy-to-use tool and is not meant to replace other full-feature tools available on the market.

#ALTERNATIVE HYPERTERM PORTABLE#

You can use IntelliPort to transfer large files from a computer onto your portable computer using a serial port rather than going through the process of setting up your portable computer on a network. IntelliPort has scroll functionality that allows you to look at received text that has scrolled off the screen. To make sure that your modem is connected properly or to view your modem's settings, you can send commands through IntelliPort and check the results. Therefore, it can serve as a valuable troubleshooting tool when setting up and using your modem. IntelliPort records the messages passed to and from the computer on the other end of your connection. IntelliPort is a program that you can use to connect to other computers, using either your null modem cable or Ethernet connection.

#ALTERNATIVE HYPERTERM WINDOWS#

As you already know, Microsoft has dropped the development of HyperTerminal starting with Windows 7.

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[swarmik]

I was asked by my manager to download data from multiple boxes full of floppy disks he used in the early 90s. I’m used to people at work asking me for help with old UNIX systems, but reading 5.25-inch floppies is here for the first time. He used to be a musician when he lived in Israel and used his 386 PC as a sequencer with an E-mu Proteus/1 external wavetable synthesizer.

I picked my Vienna 286 computer to read the floppies. It’s quite a high spec machine with an 8MHz CPU, math coprocessor, Hercules-compatible Graphics and 1.5meg ISA RAM card… and it’s my only computer with a 5.25-inch drive. If you ask why I removed the CRT before I started copying the files, ugly mold smell goes from it every time it’s turned on and I hate it. I rather configured the machine to work in a headless mode (straight boot into Microsoft InterLink Server) and accessed the drives from a laptop over a null-modem cable.

[koney-scanlines]

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