[HN Gopher] Try the last internet Kermit server
___________________________________________________________________
Try the last internet Kermit server
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 197 points
Date : 2023-08-05 05:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (changelog.complete.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (changelog.complete.org)
| tazjin wrote:
| > This story is a winding one, beginning in 1981. Kermit is, to
| the best of my knowledge, the oldest actively-maintained software
| package with an original developer still participating.
|
| This is a bit of a philosophical question, for example, much of
| the (Lisp) code in current Emacs is from the 70s, but the GNU
| Emacs interpreter wasn't started until the mid 80s (also ...
| people weren't great at version control in the 70s, so there's
| not much actual development history).
| queuebert wrote:
| I'm sure there are a bunch of Fortran libraries, like BLAS and
| LINPACK, that are still actively developed by the original
| developers and date back to the '70s. (Assuming one bug fix per
| decade counts as "actively developed".)
| TheRealKing wrote:
| The petroleum industry and academia have codebases dating
| back to FORTRAN66, which are still actively developed, albeit
| in modern Fortran.
| Canada wrote:
| I remember using this to transfer files with BBS... zmodem was
| more popular but kermit could take advantage of full duplex so
| you could upload some files while downloading others at the same
| time. I had no idea it was still a thing.
| sllabres wrote:
| The same here. My BBS time was with [xz]modem only, but as the
| author of the article I've used kermit for a HP48-SX too (Love
| it that there is a android emulator for this calculator :-)
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| I was active during that time, but like programming languages
| now, I played with all the ul/dl protocols I could find,
| then. In addition to the ones you mentioned, there was also
| wxmodem and ymodem that saw some popularity in places.
|
| I once had a chat on Compuserve with Ward Christensen, the
| inventor of xmodem. He seemed surprised that anyone
| recognized his name.
| detourdog wrote:
| I remember Kermit as thing I didn't have to use because of
| z-modem. I had a comprehension problem and never got kermt
| working but z-modem I could.
| glimshe wrote:
| I considered Kermit bad then for pretty much anything, imagine
| now...
| jtode wrote:
| Sure. Whereas in many many cases, zmodem was not an option,
| Kermit worked everywhere, if you believe OP.
|
| I also remember using Kermit for a BBS file transfer once.
| Once.
| pridkett wrote:
| > I also remember using Kermit for a BBS file transfer
| once. Once.
|
| Similar memory here. Wasn't sure about the different
| protocols offered in Telix and I used Kermit once because
| the BBS offered it. Right after the sysop burst in on chat
| and told me not to use Kermit and only use zmodem.
|
| That was basically what I did until HSLink came out and let
| me do bidirectional, chat, and play Tetris while waiting.
| Good times. Good memories.
| pdw wrote:
| Well, according to the article Kermit's performance problems
| have been fixed :)
|
| "Although ZModem came out a few years before Kermit had its
| performance optimizations, by about 1993 Kermit was on par or
| faster than ZModem."
| devilbunny wrote:
| It _was_ optimizable - if you had a proper Kermit client
| that did all the stuff ZModem did, like sliding ACK windows
| and larger packet sizes. After we had error-correcting
| modem protocols, line noise was much less of an issue.
|
| But most Kermit protocols in terminal software implemented
| only the most basic version of the protocol and didn't
| support all the options that you needed to set.
|
| Not sure about resuming, which was AFAICT only a ZModem
| thing (and the best part of it).
| tyingq wrote:
| If you make comparisons only for "upload/download a file"
| versus, for example, zmodem...Kermit doesn't fare well.
|
| Kermit is, though, more than that. One example is that it
| includes a scripting functionality somewhat like the once
| popular "Expect" package[1]. For things like interacting with
| a Cisco router cli, ftp servers, etc. Or, as the article
| mentions, "server mode[2]"...something zmodem also doesn't
| do.
|
| So, for example, it was really useful "back in the day" for
| things like connecting to a network enabled modem bank and
| running batch jobs to do various things.
|
| [1] http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckscripts.html
|
| [2] http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/ckututor.html#iksd
| shrubble wrote:
| Expect is still very popular! There are implementations for
| C, Python, and Perl at the least. And my expect scripts
| written years ago, still work...
| tyingq wrote:
| Ah sure. I didn't mean they were now unpopular. Just that
| the need for them has drawn down as many things you would
| automate via expect now have better api-based choices. Or
| have otherwise dwindled...I don't see too many modem
| banks around these days.
| shrubble wrote:
| Very true, formerly command line only network devices now
| have APIs in some cases; the Cisco Meraki devices don't
| even have a CLI, only a cloud based web mgmt GUI, or a
| Restful API.
| voxadam wrote:
| I seem to remember the key benefit ZMODEM had over Kermit was
| the ability to restart an interrupted file transfer. This was
| especially useful in the days of yore when your younger sibling
| or mom picked up the extension causing your modem to drop its
| connection.
| carlivar wrote:
| I liked Super Zmodem, so I could play Tetris while my files
| downloaded.
| boece wrote:
| As I recall it Zmodem was more than nominally faster than
| Xmodem but in those days to squeeze even 5 to 10% speed
| improvement in speed on a 2400-14400 bps modem was huge.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yep. ZMODEM was my fave for that reason and it being a tiny
| bit faster. (I could be mistaken, remembering wrong)
| justanother wrote:
| Pretty much the only way to download the cool warez that you FTPd
| down (from some Scandinavian anonymous FTP site that displayed
| the warning "our transatlantic link is only 128Kbit, so Yankees
| please only leech at night") to your VM/CMS account. Can even be
| used to transfer stuff over 2400bps AX.25 hamradio channels. The
| 1980s equivalent of zip ties and bailing wire.
| Someone wrote:
| > from some Scandinavian anonymous FTP site
|
| funet.fi, I guess. Stil up and running (https://www.funet.fi/)
| ddingus wrote:
| Oh that address brings back memories... ftp.funet.fi
|
| Was my first introduction to archive, FTP, and related
| things. I used to visit a friend at Uni and use his higher
| baud rate connection, until I got my own.
|
| That account was a shell / SLIP type, and if I wanted
| something bigger than my modest quota, a quick note to the
| sysop would see it raised and an appointment to stop by the
| shop with portable media.
|
| Damn good times.
|
| For me, the magic of the tech was one thing. So much growing
| in such a short time!
|
| But the people! Man, people cared. Most of them did anyway.
| We all (almost all) were mentored online by peers and sysops
| trying hard to build something good. Honor how special and
| enabling it all was.
|
| I miss that the most. Logging on to read news of the day,
| little signposts for all of us to see, go explore. Was nice
| and it made me want to do the same give back what was given
| to me.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Back in the day (the 80's) when I was a young broth-of-a-boy
| junior engineer we used both Kermit and BLAST[0] to move files
| between Data General mini's and a bunch of destinations running
| CP/M, PC/MS-DOS, CP/N, BBC Micros and all sorts. Good times.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLAST_(protocol)
| Jemm wrote:
| You won't get the 1980s experience without busy signals, mom
| telling you to get off the phone with your computer, and sysops
| who demand upload/download ratios.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Eventually Mum just picks up the phone because you won't get
| off after 8 hours and she kills your connection.
|
| Source: experience.
| grubbs wrote:
| My father was an engineer and I guess saw the value in
| uninterrupted Internet. We had three phone lines in our
| home..maybe we should have just gone with ISDN now that I think
| about it.
| cduzz wrote:
| ISDN was a huge PITA to get to a residence. It took months to
| get installed; I think there was one person in California who
| actually did the installations.
|
| I later moved from one apartment to another in the complex;
| it would have taken Stan another 6 months to move the service
| from one address to another so I just opened up the phone
| panel (wasn't locked) and moved the wires -- there was a 1
| week period where I was paying rent on both...
|
| There was an 800 number in the panel "contact us if changing
| this so we can update the 911 database" I called it,
| explained what I did and that was that. Maybe; I kept getting
| billed, I kept the service, the billing info went to the
| right address; I never did call for emergency services to see
| if they'd show up.
|
| ISDN was certainly nice, though. Ah, the 90s, what a time to
| be alive.
| boece wrote:
| ISDN BRI service became fairly popular during the big
| dialup ISP boom of the mid-to-late 90s. I worked for a tiny
| ISP during said boom and we would somewhat routinely
| (again, we were quite small; the other big local ISPs
| ordered 100s to 1000s of ISDN lines a year) order ISDN
| Centrex service - as the unlimited ISDN service offering
| was then called from Pacbell - for our customers. Many many
| ISPs sold a crapload of Ascend P50 ISDN routers. We even
| sold a few to some of our business customers. It worked
| pretty well. Once we even drove down to the Ascend offices
| in Alameda to get our Ascend digital modem box RMA'd.
|
| But yes ISDN was generally quite exotic for the consumer
| market. Centrex service (or whatever the particular RBOC
| chose to call it) even moreso. It was as close as most
| consumers could get to "broadband" in the 90s. I used it
| myself at a couple places including my small apartment in
| Sacramento. It didn't seem too hard to get it ordered and
| setup. It may have helped that we knew a Pacbell tech, the
| dad of one of the principals at the ISP I worked at. Not
| sure if he helped grease the wheels but he may have. He
| pulled 100 pairs into an apartment where we temporarily
| hosted the ISP. Pretty handy guy to know back in those days
| and for that particular business.
|
| Later on I've only seen ISDN in PRI form. When I later got
| a "real job" in an IT department PRI was commonly used for
| the Shoretel gear we had. I never worked on the telecom
| side for bigger companies though and of course almost
| everything went to 100% VoIP eventually.
| cduzz wrote:
| Yeah, I somehow ended up being responsible for the
| college campus modem bank a bit before I got my home ISDN
| setup; a pair of livingston portmasters and a pair of T1s
| that connected them to the phone co.
|
| One of the hardest / most confusing problems I ever had
| was with that stuff -- TPC gave me 2 hunt groups (one for
| faculty/staff the other for students). One worked fine
| the other just wouldn't work at all. Eventually (after
| turning off the "broken" one and still getting a
| login/PPP prompt when dialing I called TPC and asked "hey
| -- your docs have these 2 hunt groups -- are you _sure_
| they're right?" and they'd actually given me another
| org's phone number for one of them and that other org
| _also_ had a livingston portmaster on it. Sigh.
|
| SDLC phone network stuff is fascinating -- "why is it all
| on one clock?" (synchronous data link control) -- because
| when it was invented it was absurd to presume you could
| get enough ram to buffer things for packets (ha! What's a
| packet?) -- it all just happens at all at once
| everywhere.
|
| Another time someone dropped a backhoe on the cable
| trunks between the campus phone bunker and the campus; I
| glanced over and saw the techs patiently stitching back
| together the eleventy billion cable pairs between the
| switch and each phone on campus. 30 tons of copper later
| got replaced by 500 pounds of memory...
|
| Ayhow, grandpa DELNI needs a nap...
| dhosek wrote:
| In 1989, I managed to persuade UIC to let me borrow a
| terminal and 1200bd(!) modem so I could connect to their IBM
| system from home. I remember how inconvenient it was to lug
| that terminal home by public transit. I ordered a dedicated
| phone line for it and it was a shame that I had 749-7491 as a
| number that nobody would ever call (and that I gave up when I
| returned to California in August).
| pmoriarty wrote:
| The quintessential signature of the BBS era was the sound of
| data that you heard coming out of your phone receiver.
| clavoie wrote:
| One of my useless skills back then was being able to
| recognize modem speeds, brand and sometimes (especially
| Motorolas and USRs) model just from the handshake noises they
| made.
|
| For a little while, I could recognize my old man's BBS'
| individual subscribers calling in just by turning up the
| volume of the modem on top the 386 box...
| fsckboy wrote:
| in the days of 7-digit dialing, dialing the Compuserve access
| number in Watertown MA (which one used from Cambridge MA)
| played "camptown ladies sing this song"
| xoxxala wrote:
| I was the Compuserve rep for Interplay back in the day, and
| the account number (76702,1342) will be forever burned in
| my memory. That account was free for some areas of CIS, but
| not all of it (much to the chagrin of one of producers, who
| ran up a $1,500 bill in one month of gaming).
| jmspring wrote:
| Had my own line in the mid 80s. In the East Bay (SF Bay
| California) we had a multiline chat / gaming / etc. bbs known
| as Popnet. It was a base for a dozens of individuals meeting
| and socializing and still staying connected nearly 40 years
| later. This was in addition to the dozens of BBSs in the area -
| 925, 510, 415, etc.
|
| Edit - the online guide to popnet -
| https://archive.org/details/popnet-user-manual
| mellamoyo wrote:
| I still use the Kermit client almost daily. Enterprise network
| gear still has serial ports (most still defaulted to 9600 baud!)
| and have an old laptop running MS-DOS and Kermit in my staging
| room to quickly configure remote access.
|
| Boots in seconds :)
| eva_cananim wrote:
| This reminds me of one of my many complaints about Microsoft
| software.
|
| Windows 95, 98 and XP included hyperterminal. In theory
| hyperterminal could send and receive files over a serial port. On
| a few occasions I came across a machine with a broken floppy
| drive or something and tried to use a null modem cable.
|
| Hyperterminal would give up after a few hundred kilobytes,
| because it was programmed to do that. You had to find and
| transfer a less stupid piece of software then use that instead.
| tssva wrote:
| > Hyperterminal would give up after a few hundred kilobytes,
| because it was programmed to do that. You had to find and
| transfer a less stupid piece of software then use that instead.
|
| Hyperterminal didn't have file transfer limitations built-in to
| it. I used Hyperterminal regularly to transfer files much
| larger than a few hundred kilobytes.
| eva_cananim wrote:
| My experience was that hyperterminal, when transfering files,
| would give up after retrying a few blocks and there was no
| way to tell it to not do that and keep trying.
| dmd wrote:
| Hyperterminal was not the problem. I regularly used
| Hyperterminal on Win95 to transfer tens of megabytes of data
| over null modem cables.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| https://youtu.be/i0UR89QmPu0?t=669
| taubek wrote:
| Kermit, Zmodem, and BBS...
| a-dub wrote:
| don't miss the prolific author's fascinating web archive hosted
| at columbia university:
|
| homepage: http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/
|
| history of computing at columbia:
| http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/
|
| history of the genesis of kermit:
| http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/dec20.html#kermit
|
| writings about the 1968 protests:
| http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1968/index.html
| NikkiA wrote:
| I wonder if there are any pad/cpad servers still around anywhere?
| Probably not, I don't think much of the X.25 JANET remains at
| this point.
| asgeirn wrote:
| In https://www.kermitproject.org/newsn5.html I found this lovely
| quote:
|
| > "Kermit will send data over a communication channel that is
| only slightly better than a pair of tin cans connected with a wet
| string")
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| This is actually kind of genius:
|
| > To reduce transmission overhead, the Kermit protocol uses a
| simple, but often surprisingly effective, compression
| technique: repeated byte values are represented by a count+byte
| combination.
|
| > Analysis of large volumes of both textual and binary data
| shows an average compression of 15-20%.
| snvzz wrote:
| >repeated byte values are represented by a count+byte
| combination.
|
| That's just an implementation of RLE[0]. Very common in
| formats from the 80s. RLE was e.g. used in Amiga IFF ILBM
| compression.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_encoding
| jgaa wrote:
| Kermit was how I managed to get online for the first time.
|
| I bought a new 8086 PC clone back in the days. Then I ordered a
| add-on card with a serial port and an external 300 baud modem
| from a store in UK (I lived in Norway, and I could not find
| anyone who sold this bleeding edge technology there).
|
| Then I wrote a simple communication program, implementing parts
| of the Kermit protocol - probably in Turbo Pascal. This was
| before I got my hands on a C compiler ;)
|
| Eventually my code started to work, and I was able to connect to
| a BBS and download the real Kermit application.
|
| The BBS communities, and later Usenet, was great. We were lucky
| to grow up in a era where the online communities were nice and
| mostly welcoming places.
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| > We were lucky to grow up in an era where the online
| communities were nice and mostly welcoming places.
|
| For real. It was a different time. Sure there were some
| assholes, but it seemed like a lot fewer. The tech was jankier
| then and you kinda needed help from others now and again, so it
| probably behooved you to not be a dick. That and the community
| was just smaller, and there were fewer of them, so burning a
| bridge didn't mean there'd be another to replace it.
|
| I would probably be doing something entirely different for a
| living if it weren't for the late 90s BBS community.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I fondly remember puzzling over this option in Hyperterminal as a
| kid in the 90s. The web was smaller then so the features and
| stock programs of the OS were relatively more interesting and I
| spent a lot of time with them.
| helf wrote:
| I had a toshiba T3100 laptop that was impossibly finicky about
| what OS it would run (I only sold it off to a collector finally a
| few years ago).
|
| After hundreds of hours of attempts I managed to get FreeDOS 0.4b
| to boot up successfully off a 720kb floppy. I tried a ridiculous
| number of DOSes (including 3.2 that it originally shipped with)
| and other OSes and THAT version of FreeDOS is the only one that
| would load for some reason.
|
| Anyways, all that to say I used that laptop for years with a
| kermit lite client to act as a serial console to some of my ccmp
| machines (Sparc Station 20 etc). Worked beautifully and
| gorgeously as that (640x400 orange gas plasma display) .
|
| If you are a fan of old systems and want a nice serial terminal
| get a t3x00. They arent that expensive and they have a wonderful
| keyboard and beautiful screens :)
| anthk wrote:
| There's SVARDOS which is FreeDOS tweaked for 8086.
| anthk wrote:
| http://svardos.org/ Enjoy.
| snvzz wrote:
| Today I realized the author of svardos is also the author
| for:
|
| * fdnpkg
|
| * etherdfs
|
| * ethflop
|
| * picotcp dos port
|
| * gopherus
|
| Among plenty of other cool software. Impressive.
| whartung wrote:
| My favorite place I found Kermit was in the HP-48. We used 48s
| for data Cokely and Kermit to transfer the data to PCs.
|
| The fact that Kermit existed on the 48 was part of the Aha moment
| deciding to use them for the project.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I use to use kermit with Coherent OS to log into the Sun System
| at work. It was setup to dial into work, then work would call be
| back and kermit would answer.
|
| This avoided long-distant charges :)
|
| good times, coherent info:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherent_%28operating_system%2...
| sovok wrote:
| The linked project website is interesting as well and quite a
| deep rabbit hole: https://www.kermitproject.org/kermit.html
|
| > Although terminal emulation has been largely supplanted by the
| Web for online access, Kermit software continues to play a role
| in other applications such as remote sensing and data collection,
| management and troubleshooting of networking and
| telecommunications equipment, back office work, cargo and
| inventory management, medical insurance claim submission,
| electronic funds transfer, and online filing of income tax
| returns. Kermit software is embedded in network routers and
| switches, in cell-phone towers, in medical diagnostic and
| monitoring equipment, even in cardiac pacemakers, not to mention
| the cash registers of quite a few big-name "big box" retailers.
| In 2002 Kermit flew on the International Space Station, and
| Kermit software is the communication method used by EM APEX ocean
| floats (left) supplying realtime data to hurricane researchers
| and trackers to this day (the hurricane project entered a new
| expanded phase in 2010 based on a new version of Embedded
| Kermit).
|
| It contains its own Perl-like scripting language that predates
| Perl (https://www.kermitproject.org/ckscripts.html#tut), which
| supports ,,Prolog-like declarative logic programming"
| (https://www.kermitproject.org/ftp/kermit/scripts/socrates), some
| OOP (https://www.kermitproject.org/ftp/kermit/scripts/oop) and
| S-expressions (https://www.kermitproject.org/ftp/kermit/scripts/s
| hortest_pa...).
|
| There is a text-to-HTML converter
| (https://www.kermitproject.org/ftp/kermit/scripts/html). Someone
| should build a static site generator with that, running on a
| calculator or embedded system on some buoy.
| snvzz wrote:
| I love `/mirrors/kermit/archives`.
|
| Kermit clients have been written for so many platforms.
|
| But I notice some are missing here (or I can't find?) yet
| available in kermit's website here[0], such as mskermit and
| pckermit.
|
| 0. https://www.kermitproject.org/archive.html
| pridkett wrote:
| Reading this article makes me want to set up an old school BBS
| with door games like BRE, Legend of the Red Dragon, and Trade
| Wars 2002.
| snvzz wrote:
| Or connect to an existing one. There's plenty. Some of them are
| quite active.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35703057 - April 2023 (107
| comments)
|
| _C-Kermit Update History (since 8.0)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31459620 - May 2022 (7
| comments)
|
| _Kermit - Misconceptions and Controversies (2021)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31141417 - April 2022 (26
| comments)
|
| _Ask HN: How many of you are still using Kermit (the protocol)?_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29662980 - Dec 2021 (6
| comments)
|
| _Is This Site Secure?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22136710 - Jan 2020 (50
| comments)
|
| _The Truth about Kermit News (1994)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20588274 - Aug 2019 (3
| comments)
|
| _Transfer your files with Kermit_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19048427 - Jan 2019 (2
| comments)
|
| _Important News About the Kermit Project_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2421884 - April 2011 (1
| comment)
| b1c837696ba28b wrote:
| I'm surprised to see no references to space applications. Back
| when I was using Kermit on CP/M I had an acquaintance who hacked
| Kermit for satellite coms at TRW in El Segundo. Long live W6TRW!
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-08-06 23:02 UTC)