The Internet |  | by Art Tantillo |
My purpose is to encourage all you folks that have an old XT or AT computer to join the Internet fun and exploration. If you have been reading and collecting data about the computer system you will need in order to get on the Internet, let me suggest that you will need much less.
I know of several friends that have upgraded to Windows machines that have an XT with its tiny 10 to 30 meg hard drive stashed away somewhere collecting dust or the spouse is using it for word processing etc. I'll bet you know of one too. Say you got hold of an XT with hard drive. (You probably don't want to add a hard drive unless you have lots of money) But you may want to add a 14.4k modem and a shareware communications program for around $100.00 and then you will have a SIMPLE package that will get you on the Internet. So it's slow. It's a lot faster than you can read and slow enough so that you can watch it execute commands. So is there a catch? Read on and see if you can decide.
When I first logged on to HALNet with my old 10Mhz 8088 XT in 1994 I had a shell account that had a Menu from which to choose many UNIX shell commands. The Menu was killed in late 1995 because it was not compatible with the new SLIP/PPP protocols that all the Windows folks were using. This meant that without the menu, me and my XT were going to have to grovel at the UNIX commandline prompt if we wanted to be Internet players. My XT didn't seem to mind, so it was up to me to learn some of the UNIX shell commands. I have found the learning not only rewarding but mostly fun. It is very much like learning MSDOS commands, which I never really learned once I bought Norton Commander to protect and shield me from DOS.
Here are some useful UNIX shell commands that even the Windows folks may like to try. Use them at the UNIX prompt, which is: hal-pc#. [This is to prompt you for information, but not for your HAL-PC membership number. Ed.]
Command Description
===============================================================
apropos `(1)' print a list of ALL the commands (really a lot)
cat type a file to the console
cd change directory
cp copy a file
du k disk usage in K Bytes
finger who's on the system w/full name
ftp run a file transfer protocol session
grep find a string in a file
ispell spelling checker
ls list of files (short listing)
ls -la list of all files and directories (long listing)
lynx run a lynx browser session
mkdir make a directory
more view a file a page at a time
mv move or rename a file
passwd change your password
pico edit a file
pine mail program
rm remove a file (delete)
rmdir remove an empty directory
rz receive a Zmodem download on Unix
sz send a Zmodem upload from Unix
telnet run a telnet client session
tin news reader
w who's on the system
who who's on the system
I hate steep learning curves. I believe in the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy. Not having Windows and PPP and SLIP and NetScape and etc. keeps it simple for me. If you want to see how complicated, frustrating and stressful life can get, attend one of HALNet's Internet 101 classes or monitor the INET conference on HALPC BBS and hear the pain the Windows folks are having trying to get configured and up and running on the Internet. But enough rationalization. Of course when my XT dies guess what my next computer will have to be.
Life at the commandline has some frustrations too. No pretty on-line pictures when Web browsing. (A plus for parents who worry about their children viewing dirty pictures.) Only text. (There is dirty text however.) No point and click on long site names. And when you try to type anything, you can be visited by the alien invaders. (Garbage characters that invade your screen and mess up whatever you are doing.) One of the first commands to learn is how to refresh your screen for whatever program you are in, to get rid of any garbage that doesn't stick so that you can delete the garbage that did stick. I have much worse names for my terminal than DUMB.
Let me explain a little about my system and why I have it configured the way I do. I have a color .28 dpi VGA monitor. I like color and the .28 dpi resolution and I will use it on my upgrade to a 486 or whatever. My communication program is PROCOMM PLUS for DOS. It has hot (meta) keys into which I can pretype up to 50 characters of a site address per key and then I just hit one key and it types out the site address and executes the command. That eliminates typos and most garbage interference. So a communications program with that feature may be the heart of the MSDOS based system.
I don't think I would have enjoyed learning about UNIX if it were not for a book about UNIX. While I seem to be promoting books, "The New Internet Navigator" by Paul Glister saved me much grief learning about the Internet and the programs mentioned below. Before I got the books I spent many hours of capturing and printing out Unix manual pages and FAQs and help files before I realized that I needed books that were written in simple English and not what seemed like source code.
One of the most interesting things I do with my Internet connection is World Wide Web browsing with the Lynxprogram. Even though every Web site I have visited states that it is optimized for Netscape I have yet to have a problem navigating or viewing the text. I also like to visit FTP sites and collect text files. I should add that I have not found a binary file on the net that I wanted that I couldn't find on the HALPC BBS. I find it very easy to do e-mail with the PINE mail program. The Tin program is easy to learn and does a good job searching, reading and saving news group messages. I haven't even got to using Archie, IRC, Gopher and Telnet yet. All these programs and more come to you with your HALNet shell account.
So check out that XT or AT and join the Internet fun. But remember, real computers, used or new, are getting cheaper every day so don't spend too much getting that XT/AT on the Net.
Art Tantillo is a HAL-PC member.
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