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Just for the fun of it, I want to get an old Tandy 1400LT laptop:

  • NEC V20 (Intel 8088 equivalent)
  • 640 KB RAM
  • 9'' CGA backlit monochrome display
  • two 3,5'' 720KB DD floppy drives
  • RS-232C serial port (DB-9 M)
  • Centronics port parallel (DB-25 F)

enter image description here

I want to connect the thing to the internet and use it as an SSH terminal.

The OS should be no problem as it is a 386 hardware. There should be a small Linux distribution which can be run on it.

The problem I see here is the internet connection. Does anyone have experience with serial/parallel-to-Ethernet converters?

Excellll
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Clemens Bergmann
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12 Answers12

35

Well, if you're really feeling old-school, you can go back to a prehistory I'm barely old enough to remember!

You will need:

  1. A copy of DOS to run on the Tandy
  2. Kermit (the terminal emulator, not the frog)
  3. A null modem cable (or for some real old-school cred, a couple of dial-up modems & phone lines)
  4. A machine running some kind of Unix-like OS, connected to the internet, with a serial port.

Configure the Unix machine's getty or eqiuvalent so you can log in on the serial console.

Connect the Tandy to the Unix machine's serial port.
Either using the null modem cable or via the two modems and the telephone network.

Fire up the terminal emulator.

Dial the modem if required.

Log in to the Unix box.

Use links (or lynx), ftp, PINE, or any other favorite text-mode internet software.

For best results watch this while setting it all up.

voretaq7
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30

The OS should be no problem as it is a 386 hardware.

You'll probably need 4MB of RAM (likely higher) at an absolute minimum to run Linux, and likely 16MB to run any distribution or kernel with a decent software selection since 2000 or so. If you can't upgrade the RAM you are stuck.

Some brief searches seem to suggest this has an 8088 with 512KB or 768KB or RAM, though. Modern Linux won't run on that at all. (You may want to keep an eye on ELKS, the Tandy's NEC CPU is mentioned in the boot/setup.S file.)

I did get Linux booted on an old 1995-era "Winbook" laptop via floppy, I believe I used muLinux.

rs-232c connector

The way to "convert" serial to a network connection is PPP. You would need to set up a PPP client on your laptop, and have a pppd running on another Linux/Windows host that can route your ppp connection to your outgoing Internet connection.

You can probably still use it as an ssh terminal somehow if you install SSHDOS on it.

If anything, put an RS-232 adapter on your Linux system, configure your inittab to spawn a getty on ttyS0 or ttyUSB0 and use a DOS terminal program to access your system.

Scott Leadley
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LawrenceC
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13

I have a 1400HD and oddly enough do connect it to the internets.

The best method is to get a Xircom PE3-10BT ethernet adapter which will connect to the 1400's parallel port. The PE3 has a DOS ODI driver which will let you use a TCP stack like mTCP, WATTCP, PC/TCP, etc. mTCP includes a irc, ftp, telnet and other clients and works well.

Next would be to connect a Digi One SP or linux box running tcpser to the 1400's serial port and use it as a virtual modem. Either will emulate a modem connected to com1 letting you use a normal terminal software such as procomm, telix, qmpro on the 1400 to telnet.

Renju Chandran chingath
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Adam Ustine
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12

May I suggest that you try Minix v2.0? It will run on XT hardware like your laptop, although it will probably take some fiddling.

Minix 2.0 is reasonably full-featured and there is a contributed PPP driver that will also run on XT-style hardware. You can then use PPP over a serial connection to a properly networked Linux system. Finding an SSH client that will work on Minix with so little memory is more of a challenge, however...

thkala
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9

NAME: 1400 HD
MANUFACTURER: Tandy Radio Shack
TYPE: Portable
ORIGIN: U.S.A.
YEAR: 1987
END OF PRODUCTION: Unknown
BUILT IN LANGUAGE: MS-DOS, GW-BASIC & DESKmate delivered on disks
KEYBOARD: full stroke keyboard, 76 keys
CPU: NEC V20 (Intel 8088 equivalent)
SPEED: 4.77MHz or 7.16MHz
CO-PROCESSOR: Intel 8087-2 (8 MHz) math co-processor
RAM: 640 KB + 128 KB available for RAM-based disk driver or print spooler
ROM: 16 KB
TEXT MODES: 40 x 25, 80 x 25
GRAPHIC MODES: 640 x 200 (monochrome 9'' LCD backlight display), conform to IBM CGA
COLORS: 16 shades of blue with built-in LCD display. Colours with external monitor
SOUND: Sound beeper
SIZE / WEIGHT: 3.5 x 14.5 x 12.5 inches / 13.5 lbs 370 x 310 x 80 mm / 5Kg
I/O PORTS: AC adapter, Centronics/parallel (DB-25 F), RS232/serial port (DB-9 M), RGBI output for color monitor (DB-9 F), composite video output, enhanced keyboard (5 pin Din F), 2 internal slots (modem, I/O bus)
BUILT IN MEDIA:
LT & FD : 2 x 3.5'' floppy disk drives (DS DD, 720 KB each)
HD: one 3.5'' floppy disk drive (720 KB) + 20MB hard disk
OS: Tandy DOS 3
POWER SUPPLY: External PSU - 15v DC 700mA and internal battery (12 volt, 2200 mAh, 4 hours of continuous use)
PERIPHERALS: 1200 baud modem, 128 KB expansion RAMdrive, external hard-disk
PRICE: $1599 (USA, 1987)

According to the above specs, in order to connect this properly you would need to find the original 1200 baud modem listed in the PERIPHERALS section and connect using dial-up. 1200 baud = 1200 B/s. You will need something similar to the device shown on image below:

TRS-80 Modem DC-2212

eyoung100
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5

You are not going to run Linux or any multitasking OS, the 8088 simply does not have the MMU required. Your only chance is DOS using something like Arachne DOS browser - or an old version of it that fits into your available memory. If only want to use it as a console, it's easy enough using a DOS terminal program.

Arachne
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3

One option that comes to mind, given that you admit in your question you only really want to use it as a SSH terminal anyway, would be to use a terminal emulator on the Tandy to act as a serial terminal to a more modern computer, connected over RS232.

You could still effectively "SSH out" to hosts on the internet although obviously in this case the laptop itself is not actually on the net. But it would definitely be a lot more usable.

Coxy
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3

Try using a Console server / terminal servers / serial server / device server - different names for the same thing. You can connect to it via your RS-232 port (assuming you get the cable right - you may need to build one) and from there out via ethernet to the internet. But why bother. Its cheaper and more fun to get a Raspberry Pie, have a real linux distro on a modern processor, and if you want to go old school boot it up using the Risc OS or use one of the many available emulators.

Robert
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The modem connects to the motherboard with a 20 pin connector. Remove the internal modem. (It connects to the uart) U can use that connector and connect wifi to it. Then you can simply use a terminal program and some AT commands to connect to the internet wireless. There are many cheap boards that do this. There are bluetooth boards also. You can keep the com port to use for your mouse. Arachne is a very good graphical browser that runs on DOS. No need for linux, Dos 6.22 does it all.

Marc
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Unless you're doing this project as a hobby in and of itself, I would hesitate to even try connecting something that old and primitive to a network. It's likely to be far more work than you bargain for, and is very likely to cause system problems. If you're green and don't want to toss a working piece of equipment (I'm that way), a better use for this might be a direct serial connection (null modem?) to a headless server, as a maintenance console in a normally lights-out environment.

Phil Perry
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You should checkout what this guy has already done and not re-invent the wheel if you don't have it :)

http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/library/network/dostcpip.htm

He describes how to get a TCP/IP stack working under DOS, although everything is using a dial up there are links to DOS browsers and other stuff.

silver
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0

Given that system specs you cannot run a current linux distro in that machine as said above but i think you can build your own linux to fit that laptop, check Linux From Scratch tutorials and maybe you can install a simple core linux with just a bash terminal.

2 other options are:

Become programmer (if you are not already) and build your own OS

Ask a programmer to develop an OS for you (look for arduino and small-medium devices programmers)

Isidro.rn
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