Raspberry Pi

My first task was to get Jim Brain’s TCPser up and running on my Raspberry Pi.  TCPser turns a standard PC serial port into an emulated Hayes compatible modem utilising TCP/IP for incoming and outgoing connections while supporting all standard Hayes commands.  Installation on the Pi is straightforward, ‘apt-get install tcpser,’ gets the job done.  I have an existing RS232 – USB serial adapter based on the Prolific PL2303TA chip set and drivers for this are included in the current Raspbian distribution.

USB To RS232

After some experimenting with the Pi hooked up via the USB adapter to the serial port on a Windows 98 box I found the following options gave me a working connection:- tcpser -d /dev/ttyUBS0 -p23 -s 1200 -l 4.  The baud rate (-s) can clearly be run faster although from experience I know a number of my older machines can’t cope with anything more than 1200 baud.

I then set up the Pi to auto logon and created a start-up script so that TCPser would be running on boot allowing me to run the Pi headless.  I then hooked it all up to my Psion MC400, fired up the Psion’s built in terminal software and with a quick ATDT nostromo.synchro.net was connected via the Internet to my BBS.