Add internet access to a vintage computer using Raspberry Pi — The MagPi

Hackerspace PC Computers
#1
#2

Something like this can be useful to let users on the Internet telnet into a classic computer…

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#3

exactly, love the raspberry pi idea but being a sucker for minimalism been trying to get an esp01 setup with an ftdi to do the same thing with usb before trying to tackle the user port interface or even an NES interface.

Even found out about #FujiNet and a max32 based wifi adapter for the C64 which would be nice to use with the machines we have on display but my goal is to create something that is modular, connects to xm core by default, and able to pull titles from the internet archive.

but those are my hobby projects.

@Bill What do you think we could do with that Pi232?

#4

Depends on whether we can install software to make whatever is attached to the serial port reachable by telnet. I know of no reason why not.

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#5

Depends on whether we can install software to make whatever is attached to the serial port reachable by telnet. I know of no reason why not.

Might be able to… I know of kermit and a host of “modern” comms tools but got any suggestions for a good one?

#6

Modify a telnet server to talk through the serial port instead of a system shell.

#7

oh… ok yeah that is how getty and inittab works, tcpser also does it too.

Thought you meant something on the Amiga or commodore side

#8

Of course, a good implementation should not be trivial. At the very least, it should:

  1. Serialize access so that only one person can use it at a time.
  2. Maybe implement it so that the first one in drives and everyone else can watch. This will be useful in a classroom environment.
  3. Automatically drop the connection after a period of idling or limit total connect time.
  4. Require a simple password, maybe one listed in the welcome message, to keep bots out.
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#9

What kind of firewall or anti-virus protection is needed/available for something like this?

#10

What kind of firewall or anti-virus protection is needed/available for something like this?

Well not much of any really in the results of “specialized security”; we’re talking about standard RS232, 802.11, and TCP/IP here. So if one was to use this for turning an old computer into a BBS then that’s any random tcp port doing raw socket streaming (e.g. telnet/netcat). One could even put stunnel/haproxy in front of it and have tls. On the router side mac filtering, standard nat, etc.

Personally I’d go this route:

  • raspberry pi runs fail2ban, tcpwrapper, socat, telegraf agent, and zerotier.
  • setup the firewall to allow upnp (needed for zerotier sadly but at least not hard required)
  • pass out a connection script that joins to the correct zerotier network then establishes the ssl tunnel in the background. Mostly going to be a c/k95 kermit script, shell wrapper, ansible role, or electron app with gyp bindings for libzt.

Now if one is trying to use the rp232 to connect outwards to other bbses… clamav and maybe mac filtering at the router?

Viruses are not much a thing these days in the BBS scene. No point in it since we’re all doing this as a hobby and love of the old machines so hurting one of them is like hurting our child or someone else’s child for that matter.

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