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Using a 286 as a Serial Terminal

From Richard Mills on Sun, 07 Mar 1999

Is there anyway to set-up a 286 ps/2 with and without a hard drive, for use as a dumb terminal over null modem? Specific program names would be great, I cant find a good terminal emulator for it. Also instructions for how to set it up on the client end would be super.

Thanks for your help.

Sure, it's possible. It's easy. Just install a copy of DOS (MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, or whatever) and a terminal emulator like Telix, Procomm, Qmodem, etc.

You can still find many MS-DOS compatible programs at ftp.simtel.net --- (which is actually an alternative name to ftp.cdrom.com --- the largest archive on the net)

You can find some in /pub/simtelnet/msdos/commprog and others in /pub/simtelnet/msdos/telix/

Note that Telix, Procomm, Qmodem, Telemate and most of the good terminal emulation packages for MS-DOS were not free. They are shareware. The last time I tried to register a copy of Telix I found that the company which had aquired the rights to the package had basically no interest in the MS-DOS version. They have a Windows version which seems to be the only one they still update. Luckily we don't need updates for simple terminal emulation over null modems and simple file transfers.

Another approach would be to use the MS-DOS version of Kermit from Columbia University. This should be adequate for most simple terminal operations and it has an excellent scripting language (as does Telix).

Good luck!

Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 39 April 1999

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