QL <-> MOXA Nport 5150A and Internet! Surf on Telnet connected BBS

[ge.konstantopoulos]

Hello to all,
Nice to hear from you all about similar projects, etc (some of them already implemented some years ago)

Let me say that the Simulant Wifi Modem appears our of stock today. Same status like some months ago when I wanted to get something to connect to Internet and BBSes.
This is why I got interested to the always available MOXA Nport series.

But it is important to mention again the much more possibilities of the MOXA NPort serial servers.
Some include:

1. Internet access and connection to TELNET based BBSes
2. Direct Chat of QL to any PC connected to the Internet (PC just needs to be connected to internet. No extra HW there)
3. Printing (connection) of QL to a printer (or any serial device) which is not directly attached to the QLs serial port. Printer (or serial device) can be at the other side of the globe (attached to a paired NPort also)
4. Many more...
I think at some time I will prepare another document to describe some other additional interesting Nport operational modes related to QL.

Thanks for your feedback!

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

I am looking into making making some ESP8266 Wifi Modems.

The project details can be seen:

https://subethasoftware.com/2018/02/28/ ... -firmware/

[ones' complement]

This Pico W version looks good. Or if you want one with the screeching noises D1 mini

[NL_QL_Usr]

viewtopic.php?p=56120#p56120


Its a start ....

[jobdone]

Derek,
I have made a few of those. I found the 3.5 firmware not to work. I use the 3.4 and it works great. Another pitfall was finding a genuine MAX232. I bought some MAX232 based converters from china (thankfully socketed) and the MAX232 was running hot. I also got some random characters after a while. no issues with some MAX232's I had in stock. If the converter has RX/TX LED's this comes in handy for a retro look. The 8266 boards are cheap from ali and work fine. The max232 converter I bought came with free dupont jumpers and effectively didn't even require soldering. Unfortunately finding a max232 converter with flow control was not as easy and certainly not as cheap (although to be honest maybe this was a bad option due to the crapola 232's). I added a couple of bodge wires to the socketed DIP max232(which to be honest was an easy option as it was DIP which gave a good anchor point) and used the unused I/O of the max 232 to the control lines on the 8266 and the 9pin D.
The *QL*wifi edition doesn't actually exist, it was just a bit of hex editing to remove the C64 banner

[ge.konstantopoulos]

Hello to all !
Nport can be configured easily to act as an Ethernet Modem also.
In this way you can also connect to Telnet BBSes.
Actually this is a simpler way.
I have updated the document which describes the configuration of Nport (and QL and cable) in order to include this option also.

It is attached.

Get it also from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1flDGdQ ... sp=sharing
(updated 2.1 version of doc)


Take care to all!

QL-Internet Setup_v2.1.pdf

(1.79 MiB) Downloaded 6 times

(updated 2.1 version of doc)

[ge.konstantopoulos]

Relevant topic:
viewtopic.php?t=4766
(QLTERM - XMODEM and ΣFP QL ROM bug (?) - Official Sinclair Greek QL ROM implementation)