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Subj: Dos for internet part 1
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To : DOS@WW
GETTING YOUR OLD DOS MACHINE ON THE INTERNET
____________________________________________
Forward.
Welcome to my little guide on this subject. This started out as a *very*
ad-hoc set of packet radio bulletins which were pretty rough and ready and
suffered a bit from getting untidy as little bits were added to or revised.
I have attempted to address this with a complete rewrite of the text. It is
aimed at beginners who have never had their own machine on the internet or
for those that want to know about alternative browsers or just be different!
The great thing about DOS internet is that it puts you back in charge of
your machine and what is really happening when you make a connection - just
like packet radio. Remember internet is not just about looking at flashy
wesites (http connections), it includes telnet and ftp and usenet and email.
The DOS approach demands a little more hands on approach than a modern
Windows machine, but it sure is a lot more fun and still just as useful.
You learn a great deal from it and for those of us that enjoy our old
packet radio system (sadly we're in a minority) you'll feel right at home
with this approach. I suppose the only drawback with running dos internet
is the lack of software available. This is not a fault of dos but merely
represents that since internet became truly popular Windows was already in
vogue and most programmers had gone over to writing programs for Windows.
There is still some development (Arachne) in Dos internet stuff but I doubt
there will be much more so keep hold of them old dos progs ! But at least it
can be done !
YOUR MACHINE
____________
Despite the sales hype - you don't need a fast CPU and modem to make good
use of the internet. Even an 8088 will run most of the software described.
The PC I use (apart from others) is no more than an old IBM Thinkpad laptop.
Circa 1992 this machine `boasts' a 25Mhz 486 CPU and 4 meg of ram. It is the
main workhorse for my internet and packet radio work and utility decoding
with a homemade `Hamcomm' interface. All the software has been tested on this
machine except Lynx32 which is a Win9x program. My other machine runs Win98se
and runs it instead. In fact I have even made up a floppy disk that contains
the DOS system files (use sys a: command from dos) and my internet programs
and drivers. That means I can take that disk anywhere and go on the net from
any machine regardless of operating system and setup. In this agr of cd roms
and dvd - the humble floppy still plays a useful role.
It is a good idea (although not essential) to choose a good DOS operating
system on your old PC. I have always recommended DRDOS 7.x since this
offers quite a few advantages as standard over MS DOS. On 386 CPU's and
above the DRDOS task manager (like Desqview) allows true multitasking as
opposed to task switching on MSDOS which means you can still be downloading
off the internet whilst using your machine for other things. DRDOS offers
taskswitching mode for 286 or less processors. DRDOS offers slightly more
memory for your programs, which is all very useful on an old machine when
you want as much memory for swapping and caching web pages. DRDOS is FREE !
It can be found at www.drdos.com for the latest DOS programs at:
www.opus/co.tt/dave or www.megspace.com/computers/lightspeedref/main.html
I have used old machines that run at 12Mhz, yep 12Mhz quite well so I would'nt
worry too much about CPU speed. The monitor can be a mono display since
for our purposes we are only interested in downloads and texts rather than
flashy but irrelevent graphics. But the better the better the display the
more you can do. The modem can be as little as 9k6. Surfing at 9k6 is
surpringly
effective because our DOS browsers can be setup to forgets about downloading
unwanted graphics and other junk. You'll be surprised how well it works
though I must say I don't recommend anything less even though we're
attempting
to get our old machines on the internet. Besides modems are so cheap now that
a 56k external modem can be bought for a few pounds. The reason why I have
set a base level of 9k6 is that I use my Psion PDA and laptops whilst out
and about along with my Nokia 7110 mobile phone. A mobile phone can if
chosen well offer an alternative to a fixed line but you'll have to choose
your tarriff very carefully. My personal favourite is my Cellnet (now called
O2) tarriff on pay as you go which offers me 2 pence per minute at the
weekends. I am also informed that Orange EveryDay 50 offer 50 free minutes
a day which could be used for grabbing and sending emails for nothing if
you already have it. This might be a good idea for students at Uni :-)
BEFORE YOU START
________________
You need an ISP account ! So how can you get one. Simple and free. Most ISP's
offer online acount sign up. Go to a local library since most of them have
free
internet terminals to use and setup a free account with one. You could start
with www.freeserve.com,www.tiscali.com or my favourite is www.ukonline.com and
once you have setup a free account make note of your email address, username
and password and the dialup number which is
usually an LOCAL 0845 number (local call rate). Also somewhere you will find
the smtp server address and pop3 address, usually something like
smpt.ukonline.co.uk
and pop3.ukonline.co.uk or similar. Note there is no www at the beginning.
You may need the port numbers but see the notes further on for guidance.
THE SOFTWARE REQUIRED
_____________________
The very first thing you require is a PACKET DRIVER. This is an interface
that blends your internet browser software to your modem. There are many
drivers about but I will recommend one to make it simple. It is called
LSPPP from Ladsoft. It is free and the download is about 40kb which hopefully
you can ask a friend to download for you as well as your dos browser to get
you started. LSPPP will dial your ISP and log you in as a user with your
password etc. The latest link to LSPPP can be found www.opus.co.tt/dave
Here is a sample command line to run LSPPP.
LSPPP /Z /d:0845333112 /D:45,6,1 /B:19200 /n:1 /M:at&f&k4 /P:your password
/U:your_username
You should read the LSPPP docs to understand the parameters but it's not that
hard ! Once LSPPP has done it's stuff you can then run your desired web
program and get cracking. Take note that some commands are UPPER CASE and
some are lower case !
THE BROWSERS
____________
First thing to remember is we are mostly playing real internet now and not
the fancy glitzy version typically promoted. Our browsers can work in text
mode or graphical mode. Text mode means we don't download or see any fancy
graphics or sounds (saves on the phone bill!) and if you look at the screen
shots I have provided you can pretty much see that the meat of our information
is usually just a few lines of text. Thats why we can get away with much
slower modem speeds. In text mode the OEM system fonts are used to display
the text, like the ones you normally see at the dos prompt. This makes
loading and rendering a page very quick. There is an exception to this and
that is KNOTS, which generates text in a graphical way. Then there is
graphical mode where we see the web page in full technicolour glory.
Arachne is like this, but programs such as MINUET only perform some very
rudimentary methods of graphics display/rendering which is pretty stone age.
Arachne:
Arachne is a fully featured graphical browser,ftp and email client which
will run well on something like a P90 processor (90Mhz
(part 2 follows)
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