Can a terminal program in Hatari work with telnet BBS?

[Kirkman]

I asked a similar question on stackoverflow, but I figured I'd ask here as well.

 

I use the Hatari (Atari ST) emulator on a Mac. Since there are a number of Atari ST BBSes out there still today, I'd love to be able to connect to them using a VT-52 compatible Atari terminal program, like Freeze Dried Terminal, TAZ, or VanTerm.

 

But how can I get Hatari to work with telnet?

 

I see that Hatari offers RS232/serial emulation. The manual suggests writing Hatari RS232 input/output to a file like /dev/ttyS0.

 

And I found something called socat that lets you transfer data between various channels.

 

So: is there a way to make socat take a telnet session and pipe it into a file that can be read by Hatari's RS232 emulation?

 

Any ideas? I'm a unix novice, but I'd love to get this to work.

[+Gemintronic]

I guess you could attach a real external (serial) modem and connect to a dial up Internet provider.

[Kirkman]

I guess you could attach a real external (serial) modem and connect to a dial up Internet provider.

 

I could back in the days when I had phone service, but I cancelled that last year after our house was affected by a tornado. Now we are internet only.

[Kirkman]

I did it! I was able to telnet to Dark Force BBS and play a VT-52 session of Space Empire Elite.

 

The key ingredients were Hatari, tcpser4j, and socat.

 

I wrote about how I got it work to work on my Break Into Chat blog here: http://breakintochat.com/blog/2012/12/13/telnet-to-bbs-within-emulator/

[Hatta]

Very nice work. I wonder if the same approach would work for null modem games.

[Kirkman]

Very nice work. I wonder if the same approach would work for null modem games.

 

Probably so. You wouldn't need tcpser4j, I would imagine. Just socat to connect the virtual serial ports on whatever machines you're using.

[Hatta]

Or another twist, perhaps you could use a real Atari plugged into a PC's serial port that is configured to forward over TCP.

 

I also wonder how much lag you can have on your internet connection and still maintain a serial connection.

[Kirkman]

Or another twist, perhaps you could use a real Atari plugged into a PC's serial port that is configured to forward over TCP.

 

I also wonder how much lag you can have on your internet connection and still maintain a serial connection.

 

Sure. You're still talking about a null-modem connection, right? Socat would let you do that.