Uncreative Labs

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

I've been working on a TCP/IP stack that runs on a PCjr for about 2.5 years now. I've gotten far enough along where I can write applications. So I'd like to proudly announce 'IRCjr' ..

http://brutman.com/Dos_Networking/IRC-jr.html

And no, it does not require a PCjr. Smile

Requirements are a PC, XT, Jr or newer machine with 256KB of RAM, DOS 2.x or better, and an Ethernet adapter with a packet driver. CGA, EGA, VGA and Monochrome are fine. Below is a screenshot taken using the DOSBox emulator with NE2000 support:

Most of the code is Turbo C++ 3.0 for DOS, with a sprinkling of assembly language. The TCP/IP code is built in, so you don't need any TSRs.

Happy chatting!

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Nice, I will have to try it out on my 286 this weekend.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

It sounds great. I can't wait to try it out.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Anonymous Coward wrote:

It sounds great. I can't wait to try it out.

Somebody reported an unplanned, but orderly exit from the program today. We're trying to recreate it, but haven't been successful yet.

For grins I signed onto irc.freenode.net and the #ubuntu channel. I figured that if I wanted to torture test my code, that channel would have a tremendous amount of traffic. The first run lasted over 4 hours and logged over 4000 TCP/IP packets in and out. It died when I used the '/names' command, which caused a flood of data. Looking at the traces I couldn't figure out why the other side dropped the connection, but I'm pretty sure it's not a blatant bug in my code. Smile

It's running again .. 2hrs now and another 2000 packets have gone by without incident.

Anyway, give it a shot. I'll provide general help and support for DOS networking newbies too.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

That bug was a pain to find ... A new version is available:

http://brutman.com/Dos_Networking/IRCjr.html

Mike

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

Hmm, looks like I need to re-arm the 286 or XT again tonight, and make a youtube vid of it as well.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Major updates posted last night .. improvements include:

Faster screen updates
Background processing of new incoming messages while the backscroll buffer is in use.

And changes to the TCP/IP stack:

DHCP support!
Netcat (nc) application is now included
Greatly expanded documention

Everything is available at http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/IRCjr.html (the original page) or http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/mTCP.html (a page describing the TCP/IP stack used by the application.)

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Quite a few updates in the last month:

TCP/IP performance improvements
Netcat has DNS resolver support now
Longer IRC nicknames

The latest version can be found at:

http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/mTCP.html

Mike

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

mbbrutman wrote:

Quite a few updates in the last month:

TCP/IP performance improvements
Netcat has DNS resolver support now
Longer IRC nicknames

The latest version can be found at:

http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/mTCP.html

Mike

I just tried it out today (just got around to it).

Tandy 1000 (the original) 640K RAM
Ran on 2 360K floppies, one was a boot disk with DOS 6.22 and the packet driver, the other floppy held DHCP and IRC apps.
3com 3c503 8 bit ISA network card with external transiever
I used the 3com provided packet driver with your DHCP and PCJR IRC setup and it works just fine. I didn't have too much time to test it but it connected to undernet and the channel #68kmla that I normally hang out in.

Keep up the good work.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Cool - I knew the 3C503 would work, but the Tandy is a new platform.

Don't worry about functional testing - it runs, and I've had it running for over a week at a time. But if you see a feature that you would like let me know. It's pretty stripped - there isn't a lot of memory for things like multiple open channels, but there are other types of features I can add. (Highlighting your handle when it is referenced is one I should do.)

If you haven't downloaded the code recently a few weeks ago I added some configuration options to IRCjr to control connection timeout and registration timeout. It also changed the way you set the IRCNick - no more environment variables, it's done in the mTCP config file.

Mike

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

mbbrutman wrote:

Cool - I knew the 3C503 would work, but the Tandy is a new platform.

Don't worry about functional testing - it runs, and I've had it running for over a week at a time. But if you see a feature that you would like let me know. It's pretty stripped - there isn't a lot of memory for things like multiple open channels, but there are other types of features I can add. (Highlighting your handle when it is referenced is one I should do.)

If you haven't downloaded the code recently a few weeks ago I added some configuration options to IRCjr to control connection timeout and registration timeout. It also changed the way you set the IRCNick - no more environment variables, it's done in the mTCP config file.

Mike

I grabbed the newest version on your website when I did the setup.

Do you provide the source code for those who are interested?

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Source code - talk to me.

I've given people the source code to the end user apps on request, and I've shown some of the TCP/IP source code to people. But I haven't 'given' anything away as a complete package (yet). It is still a work in progress so I don't want bugged source code making it to the wild.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

New code has been posted!

http://brutman.com/mTCP/

Some of the changes/new features:

New Ping command!
Support for ICMP - your machine will respond to PING now
Bug fix in FTP: you can change directories now using the lcd command
Bug fix in FTP: handle more variations of the PASV response string (used with EZNOS)
DHCP Client: Handle Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Break correctly
All: Small performance improvements
DHCP, DNSTEST: Smaller code size and less memory required

Regards,
Mike