Retrocomputing with OpenBSD

ONE of the tgings I really enjoy about OpenBSD is the versatility of simple UNIX tools. They can come SO handy.

Because I recently somehow ended up rediscovering BBS'es for myself I also ended up acquring a number of old PC's. It started with trying to fix up an Amstrad 386 laptop that turned out to have been entirely gutted by the eBay vendor -- to little success so far. But then, as now there was an itch to be scratched, I ended up buying a beautiful Toshiba 486 laptop in perfect working condition -- apart from its dead battery but I really don't care abour that -- which came with Windows 95.

However it didn't come with much software and I haven't got a floppy drive or any disks so I had to figure out some ways to work with it.

File transfers

I was very lucky because the old little ThinkCentre I use as my main OpenBSD box happened to have an RS232 connector. This meant that I could establish a nullmodem connection with the 486. I also happened to have a nullmodem cable, sheer luck.

So first connect the two machines.

I have Hyperterminal as a client under Windows95. In the 90's I never ever went as a tween I never had to work with AT commands or with serial -- we had "standard" dialup set up and sneakernet had great bandwidth in those days. So setting up Hyperterm took me a bit of time.

The settings I settled on are as follows:

Baud rate: 19200
Data bits: 8
Stop bits: 1
Parity: N
Flow control: XON/XOFF (Software)

Flow control turned out to be a gamechanger.

Then with these settings, I noticed I can send files via XMODEM from OpenBSD. The manual for `cu` says that the ~X control sequence (on a "clean line" so might have to add a Return first to clear the input line) starts an XMODEM send.

So here it goes:

$ cu -l /dev/cuu0 -s 19200
~X
Enter file path: /home/ABSOLUTE/PATH.txt

Press Enter. And then on the other machine, start Hyperterm, go to Transfer > Receive. Select XMODEM 1K. The transfer should start!

Mind, this is slow. A few kb/sec. But still faster than ... nit being able to transfer anything at all!

When done with the TX, you can quit cu using a ~. sequence to close the connection.