To put it to the test, I dialed into the DarkForce! BBS, an Atari-centric system that has been running since the early 90s on a Mega ST4 with BBS Express! ST software. It's a fitting target for an Atari ST, since it's a fellow Atari machine at heart. With the terminal software on the Mega ST sending ATDT to the Wi-Fi modem, the connection to darkforce-bbs.dyndns.org over Telnet worked, and the ANSI login screen, message boards and file sections of a real BBS came up on the original hardware, no phone line involved.
Another BBS I tested is the Ignition BBS, also accessible via telnet.
The obvious question is "why bother?", the Atari ST was never designed @@ -33,12 +34,14 @@ culture on original hardware, over Wi-Fi instead of a phone line.
Jungsi tested a WiModem232 OLED on his Atari ST and wrote about it on his blog. He used a different modem hardware than I did, but the idea is the same. He used "Connect" as his terminal software on the ST, but I used a different terminal program that could render ANSI graphics in ST Medium resolution, though I'd have to look up which one it was exactly.
+For better ANSI rendering, AnsiTerm is reportedly a better choice than Connect95 for BBS terminal use on the Atari ST.
For networking I use the STinG TCP/IP stack together with the enec.stx (or enec3.stx for 68030) network card driver. Once configured, the Mega ST gets a real IP address on the network and can reach the internet, connecting the 1980s machine to modern services. The original NetUSBee was developed by Candle'O'Sin, and the current production runs are sold by Lotharek in a sturdy grey metal case that matches the Atari look.
STinG MAC addresses on my machines: Mega ST 4 "High" 00:B7:F8:77:C6:B3, MiST A0:CE:C8:5D:9C:A2.
The USB port is particularly handy for data exchange. I use a FAT16-formatted USB stick, which the ST can read and write through the USB mass-storage driver. Because FAT16 is also readable on a modern Windows PC, I can transfer files between the Atari and a Windows machine just by moving the stick between them, no special cables or network tricks required.
@@ -33,4 +34,15 @@ parent: "/retro/"A separate ESP module provides WiFi time synchronisation for the Atari ST. czietz's simple WiFi SNTP firmware runs on the ESP and communicates with the Atari over a serial connection. Once connected, Connect95 can be used for serial communication, and WgetST can download files via HTTP, though it is limited to HTTP only.
+ +With STinG configured and the network running, the next step is getting actual services accessible from the Atari. Two approaches work well:
+Both run on a Linux machine on the same network, with the Atari pointing its browser proxy settings at that machine's IP. A Linux LXC container on the homelab can serve as a dedicated Atari internet proxy server for this purpose.