Now that my Mac 512Ke is able to use PPP for native TCP/IP, I wanted an easy way to do PPP between it and an OpenBSD server on my network. I initially did this with a physical serial cable, but was later able to do it over TCP so I could retain the use of my WiFi232.

Continue reading 1,191 words...

I recently came across an unused Dove Computer MacSnap RAM upgrade on eBay, so I bought it and installed it in my Mac 512Ke to bring its RAM up to 1Mb.

Continue reading 400 words...

The Cidco MailStation is a series of dedicated e-mail terminals sold in the 2000s as simple, standalone devices for people to use to send and receive e-mail over dialup modem. While their POP3 e-mail functionality is of little use today, the hardware is a neat Z80 development platform that integrates a 320x128 LCD, full QWERTY keyboard, and an internal modem.

After purchasing one (ok, four) on eBay some months ago, I've learned enough about the platform to write my own software that allows it to be a terminal for accessing BBSes via its modem or as a terminal for a Unix machine connected over parallel cable.

Continue reading 2,527 words...

The Dolch PAC 64 is a portable, rugged Pentium-powered PC from the mid 1990s. It was usually used (and can usually be found on eBay) as a "portable network sniffer" complete with multiple network cards supporting multiple media types.

Continue reading 1,265 words...

Back in 2015, I created a BBS for Lobsters that worked in a web browser via WebSockets. After getting an old Mac earlier this year, I wanted a way to access the BBS from the Mac as natively as I could. Adding telnet and SSH frontends to the BBS was not too difficult, but being able to login from my Mac took a bit of work.

Continue reading 1,694 words...

Although it fooled nobody, yesterday for April Fools' Day, Lobsters users that normally saw a boring list of story titles and links were greeted with a BBS-style interface to the site complete with story and comment browsing, private message reading and sending, and a multi-user chat area.

The BBS remains active at https://lobste.rs/bbs (you can login as "guest").

Continue reading 2,816 words...