Twinsock and early windows internet usage

A friend of mine let me know that there is a current drive by former users of trumpet winsock to actually send the author the $25 ($35 in adjusted money) that he had asked for the shareware program. While I’ve seen Trumpet, it required a SLIP or PPP connection which I just didn’t have back in 1993/1994 timeline. Sure there was SLiRP, but it was far more involved to compile on the Ultrix machine university gave us access to, or the pay internet connection (sefl.satelnet.org!) that ran IRIX. So I ran Troy Rollo’s Twinsock.

Besides being GPL’d twinsock proxied the socket access from your Windows 3.1 computer, and ran the requests on the Unix host you connected to. The best part is that they didn’t have to know that you even ran it. Twinsock transformed the internet from being a Unix shell account that kept many people away, into a graphical experience with windows applications executing on our desktop. Since it wasn’t a real TCP/IP stack, it effectively firewalled us, and seeing we were running Windows 3.1 that was a good thing.

So to make this experence more… realistic, I took the 386BSD 0.1 image from sourceforge, and made one tweak into how it runs. I added the following to the Qemu execution:

-serial tcp:127.0.0.1:4445,server,nowait

Then I installed MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, a terminal program, and some tcp/ip programs to test into another Qemu virtual machine. I then connected the two Qemu instances like a null modem like this:

-serial tcp:127.0.0.1:4445

This way COM1 on both machines now talk together. The only major downside I’ve seen is that if the client VM is killed re-starting it doesn’t get the serial connection working, both VM’s have to be restarted from the command line.

The cool thing was I was able to use a dos terminal program and zmodem to transfer the source to 386BSD to build. Surprisingly this part went pretty smooth on all the versions of Twinsock that I tested, but version 1.3 and higher was the version that actually worked.

So with the executable built on the Unix machine, you launch the windows program, which included a minimal terminal program. And from there you can dial up, login to your Unix account, then launch the twinsock Unix component and the window minimizes and now you are ‘connected’.

Launching Twinsock

WinVN

One of the most popular programs & protocols of the “early” internet was NNTP or Net News. Net News transitioned the world from BBS’s and Forum Software. The topics were incredibly diverse, and the system was distributed by nature. And news traversed the internet in a semiquick fashion. Especially the nodes that had T1 or faster access at the time. Unlike down stream UUCP BBS’s that may only take a small feed once a day, now with Twinsock you could get whatever groups and feeds you wanted, and as fast as your little modem could download it.

So for this fun experiment, I downloaded a suitably old version of WinVN, 0.92.1. The first thing I went looking around for was a public NNTP server. A great resource for locating various news servers that have certain groups is newzbot.

So with a suitable server in hand, I was able to connect up and check a news group. It was slow and clunky like it was in the old days, but it was neat in that client server feel to know that it was running on my desktop.

MS Telnet

Naturally it wouldn’t be the internet if you still telneted all over the world for MUD’s, and even access to compilers, different systems, and school work. I had a chore of a time finding a ‘good’ telnet client, so I ended up settling with the one that Microsoft had released their own stack, ‘Wolverine’ as part of a TCP/IP protocol update for Windows for Workgroups. This stack was also significant in that this was the first time a ‘full’ and ‘real’ TCP/IP stack had been released for free. As mentioned above with Trumpet winsock, and the rest, you had to buy the network stack. This free stack was only meant for LAN access, though I’ve heard of people trying to hack PPP/SLIP stuff at the dos level, but again it wouldn’t help me, since I couldn’t SLiRP. But this was the forshadowing of how the internet was going to finally take off, and the short thriving window of 3rd party TCP/IP stacks for Windows was about to slam shut in the next release of Windows.

Mosaic 0.7

And finally we come the program that basically changed the way we do everything – Mosaic. The first web browser only worked on the NeXTSTEP, and I don’t think that Mosaic was the first PC browser, but at the time it certainly was the best. I loaded up an old version to see if it could at least hit a site by IP address, and it worked. Sadly downloading files causes the browser to crash. Mosaic was rather touchy back in the day too. Because Mosaic came from the Unix world of browsers it was a 32bit program, and needed large amounts of memory. It also was a large exe too, around 2MB! Which is far larger then doom & the dos extender! So Mosaic was the first program I can recall that needed the magical Win32s add on. I’ve mentioned Win32s before so I won’t go on and on, but like the TCP/IP from Microsoft, this also basically killed the DOS Extender market.

The first time I saw Mosaic, I was blown away, we left the world of terminals and archie/gopher/veronica to something you could use a mouse with, and enter in your own URL! It was amazing, but at the same time I thought the internet was doomed to failure as you had to READ. Oh how wrong I was to be shown later. But in the time between Windows NT 3.1 and Windows 95, there was a lot of reading expected to be done. Much like everyone at the time would reply with RTFM in the news groups for stupid questions, why there even was the “Big Dummies Guide to the Internet“, thankfully made available online, put on various shovelware CD’s and saved thanks to cd.textfiles.com.

I couldn’t get MiRC to work.. I forget what other IRC programs would actually work with Twinsock. But I didn’t spend that much time on IRC.

Oh well, that is how the internet stood in that pre Windows 95, pre wide scale PPP world. It really was amazing how fast things changed.

Minor SIMH fun

Well I updated the packages for SIMH last night, and I’ve included the win32s stuff and MS-DOS builds. This ought to allow some old schoole to have some fun!

The packages should be visable from here: https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=154308&package_id=244756

I have also decided that the MS-DOS version (being the lowest common denominator) should include some kind of ‘sampler’ of OS’s so that you can see right out of the gate what simh is capable of. Naturally you can download the MS-DOS version, and simply replace the exe’s with stuff for windows/win32s/linux etc..

SIMH 3.8-0 for MS-DOS

This is a quick survey of SIMH 3.8-0 for MS-DOS. I’ve built these exe’s with Watcom C++ 11.0a.

You can break out of any of the simulators by pressing CONTROL+E.

All of the EXE’s are for the MS-DOS environment, and I’ve built them with DOS/4GW in mind. I will have to say that an initial test shows that running this stuff under a DPMI server like Windows or OS/2 provides better performance then native switching.. It could be my PC, however I’d recommend anyone who uses these EXE’s to try them natively and under Windows 3.1 at a minimum.. Because all of the MS-DOS nature of these programs, no disk files can be over 2 gigabytes. I don’t know if that’ll be an issue but of course you can have multiple files/partitions as I recall MS-DOS 5 having a 2 gigabyte file/partition size limit..

For anyone running this natively I have included only one copy of dos4gw.exe in the root of the zip.

1. Altair
2. Altair Z80
3. The HP2100
4. The Interdata 32b
5. The Nova
6. The PDP-11
7. The PDP-8
8. The MicroVAX II
9. The VAX 11/780

============================
1. Altair 8800
simh\altair\work

This is the Altair 8800 emulator with both AltairDOS and CP/M 2.2

Both CP/M and Altair DOS are from the file ceoaltair.zip

altdos.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\altair\work>altdos
C:\simh\altair\work>altair.exe altdos.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

Altair 8800 simulator V3.8-0

MEMORY SIZE? 62
INTERRUPTS? n
HIGHEST DISK NUMBER? 1
HOW MANY DISK FILES? 5
HOW MANY RANDOM FILES? 4

055938 BYTES AVAILABLE
DOS MONITOR VER 1.0
COPYRIGHT 1977 BY MITS INC
.
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8< cpm.bat ——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\altair\work>cpm
C:\simh\altair\work>altair.exe cpm22.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

Altair 8800 simulator V3.8-0
62K CP/M VERSION 2.2 (ALTAIR 8800)
A>
Simulation stopped, PC: 172052 (JNC 172047)
sim> q
Goodbye
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8< ============================
2. The Altair 8800 z80 emulator.
simh\altairz8\work

This is more full featured then the other Altair emulator, and I’ve found the z80 to have more
software available. I’ve included the CP/M 2.2 that I found cpm2.zip

cpm2.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\altairz8\work>cpm2
C:\simh\altairz8\work>altairz8.exe cpm2.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

Altair 8800 (Z80) simulator V3.8-0

64K CP/M Version 2.2 (SIMH ALTAIR 8800, BIOS V1.25, 2 HD, 15-Jan-07)

A>
Simulation stopped, PC: 0F3FA (RRA)
sim> q
Goodbye
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8< ============================
3. The HP2100 emulator.
simh\hp2100\work

I really don’t know much about this machine, but I included a way to run the basic1 program I
found online. It kind of reminds me of the ROMBASIC back ‘in the day’… It’s basic with line
numbers so I know it’s kind of old.. I really don’t know much otherwise about this machine.

basic1.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\hp2100\work>basic1
C:\simh\hp2100\work>hp2100.exe basic1.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

HP 2100 simulator V3.8-0

READY

Simulation stopped, P: 17436 (JMP 17435)
sim> q
Goodbye
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
============================
4. The Interdata 32b emulator

simh\id32\unix6

Both of these unix’s were taken from the files iu6swre.zip and iu7swre.zip respectively.

This is research Unix v6 ported to the Interdata. I set the batch file to tell you how to
bootstrap the system, as it doesn’t just ‘turn on’.. Otherwise it should be comparable to Unix v6 on the PDP-11 or any other v6. This should be the first port of Unix outside of Western Electric. There is no halt/reboot/init 0, so I just sync the disk a few times, and then interrupt the emulator and quit.

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\id32\unix6\unixv6.bat
C:\simh\id32\unix6>id32.exe v6.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

Interdata 32b simulator V3.8-0
at the ? prompt type in:
unix
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

Interdata 32b simulator V3.8-0
v6.ini> d lfc tps 100
Read only argument
?unix
Memory = 182.50 K

login: root
You have mail.
# sync
# sync
# sync
#
Simulation stopped, PC: 2EB5C (EPSR R1,R0)
sim> q
Goodbye
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
simh\id32\unix7

This pretty much follows in the steps of the Unix v6 above. This is the research version of UNIX v7.

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\id32\unix7>unixv7.bat
At the : prompt type in
dsk(1,0)unix
ECHO is off.
Then at the # prompt hit CONTROL+D
the root password is root
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

Interdata 32b simulator V3.8-0

Boot
: dsk(1,0)unix
Memory = 248.0 K
# Restricted rights: Use, duplication, or disclosure is subject
to restrictions stated in your contracts with Western Electric
Company, Inc. and the University of Wollongong.
Fri Jan 2 18:15:04 EST 1970

login: root
Password:
# sync
# sync
# sync
#
Simulation stopped, PC: 00D20 (EPSR R1,R0)
sim> q
Goodbye
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8< ============================
5. The Nova emulator

simh\nova\work

This is RDOS V7.50, which I honestly don’t know anything about… I retrieved this OS from the archive rdosswre.tgz .

rdos.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\nova\work>nova.exe rdos.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

NOVA simulator V3.8-0

Filename?

NOVA RDOS Rev 7.50
Date (m/d/y) ? 10/31/77
Time (h:m:s) ? 10:10:00

R
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
============================
6. The PDP-11 Emulator

simh\pdp11\unixv1

This is the Unix v1 restoration project’s latest disk image, that I have retrieved from
http://code.google.com/p/unix-jun72/
Being one of the first versions of Unix it’s super primitive, however I thought it was interesting to include in this SIMH sampler to see just how far UNIX has progressed, and just how much is the same.

unixv1.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\pdp11\unixv1>unixv1.bat
C:\simh\pdp11\unixv1>pdp11 simh.cfg
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

PDP-11 simulator V3.8-0
Disabling CR
Disabling XQ
RF: buffering file in memory
TC0: 16b format, buffering file in memory
simh.cfg> att dci 5555
File open error

:login: root
root
#
Simulation stopped, PC: 007332 (MOV (SP)+,25244)
sim> q
Goodbye
RF: writing buffer to file
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
============================
7. The PDP-8 Emulator

simh\pdp8\work

This is the PDP-8 emulator with OS8. I really don’t know anything about this other then the
‘list’ command… I retrieved this from the file os8swre.tgz .

os8.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\pdp8\work>os8
C:\simh\pdp8\work>pdp8 os8.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

PDP-8 simulator V3.8-0
RX: buffering file in memory

.
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
============================
8. The MicroVAX II Emulator

simh\vax\quas

This is the MicroVAX II emulator with a miniroot of Quasijarus 0c. It’s not exactly fully functional in this state, but it’s enough to exercise the emulator, and boot up from disk.
I’ve configured the NVram so it will just boot up by default. I have left the installation tape image as quas.tap. Please note that this is *NOT* enough for a full install, this is just a demo to check that your system works.

quas.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\vax\quas>vax.exe quas.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

VAX simulator V3.8-0
NVR: buffering file in memory
Loading boot code from ka655x.bin

KA655-B V5.3, VMB 2.7
Performing normal system tests.
40..39..38..37..36..35..34..33..32..31..30..29..28..27..26..25..
24..23..22..21..20..19..18..17..16..15..14..13..12..11..10..09..
08..07..06..05..04..03..
Tests completed.
Loading system software.
(BOOT/R5:0 DUA0

2..
-DUA0
1..0..

loading boot

Boot
: /vmunix
326312+104440+130352 start 0x23b8
4.3 BSD Quasijarus UNIX #3: Sat Feb 14 20:31:03 PST 2004
[email protected]:/nbsd/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
real mem = 33521664
SYSPTSIZE limits number of buffers to 80
avail mem = 31697920
using 80 buffers containing 655360 bytes of memory
MicroVAX 3000, ucode rev 6
uda0 at uba0 csr 172150 vec 774, ipl 15
uda0: version 3 model 3
uda0: DMA burst size set to 4
ra0 at uda0 slave 0: ra81, size = 891072 sectors
dz0 at uba0 csr 160100 vec 300, ipl 15
dz1 at uba0 csr 160110 vec 310, ipl 15
dz2 at uba0 csr 160120 vec 320, ipl 15
dz3 at uba0 csr 160130 vec 330, ipl 15
Changing root device to ra0a
Automatic reboot in progress…
Tue Feb 3 17:52:10 PST 2004
Can’t open checklist file: /etc/fstab
Automatic reboot failed… help!
erase ^?, kill ^U, intr ^C
# sync
# sync
# sync
#
Simulation stopped, PC: 800029AF (BNEQ 800029C6)
Goodbye
NVR: writing buffer to file
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
============================
9. The VAX 11/780 Emulator

simh\vax780\work

The VAX 11/780 is a bit weird in that it cannot run it’s vmb.exe directly, unlike how the
MicrovaxII can run its ROM. I’ve been using extracted boot code to get the 11/780 to run. Again because I’m more familiar with Unix, I chose to include BSD 4.2’s miniroot to test functionality. This is really only suitable for testing the emulator out. I extracted the file bootra from the source code, and I took the miniroot file from the tape.

bsd42.bat

——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8<
C:\simh\vax780\work>bsd42
C:\simh\vax780\work>vax780.exe bsd42.ini
DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time Version 1.97
Copyright (c) Rational Systems, Inc. 1990-1994

VAX780 simulator V3.8-0
loading ra(0,0)boot
Boot
: ra(0,0)vmunix
199488+
4.2 BSD UNIX #9: Wed Nov 2 16:00:29 PST 1983
real mem = 8384512
avail mem = 7073792
using 102 buffers containing 835584 bytes of memory
mcr0 at tr1
mcr1 at tr2
uba0 at tr3
hk0 at uba0 csr 177440 vec 210, ipl 15
rk0 at hk0 slave 0
rk1 at hk0 slave 1
uda0 at uba0 csr 172150 vec 774, ipl 15
ra0 at uda0 slave 0
ra1 at uda0 slave 1
zs0 at uba0 csr 172520 vec 224, ipl 15
ts0 at zs0 slave 0
dz0 at uba0 csr 160100 vec 300, ipl 15
dz1 at uba0 csr 160110 vec 310, ipl 15
dz2 at uba0 csr 160120 vec 320, ipl 15
dz3 at uba0 csr 160130 vec 330, ipl 15
root on ra0
WARNING: should run interleaved swap with >= 2Mb
erase ^?, kill ^U, intr ^C
# sync
# sync
# sync
#
Simulation stopped, PC: 8000162E (BRB 80001620)
Goodbye
——8<------8<------8<------8<------8<------8< The entire source is in the ‘source’ directory with projects for all of the SIMH material.
There are a few emulators that *WILL NOT BUILD* for MS-DOS because of a lack of 64bit integers. I suppose if there is any call for the missing emulators with the DJGPP compiler, assuming that it contains 64bit integer support. It’s completely unverified on my part. I’ve also done some preliminary work on networking with packet network drivers, however I am experiencing some weird timeouts. It’s hard to track down at the moment, but I’ll keep plugging away.

I don’t think there is any reason why you would not be able to use OpenWATCOM to build these files.

Fun with Win32s!

Well I planned on doing an update, but I didn’t get around to it. I’ll post my fun thru dec alpha fun later.
In the meantime, I was combing ebay, and I saw a cheap copy of Watcom C++ version 11. Now back in college I had 10.0, and it was AWESOME! It does 16bit & 32bit development of OS/2 MS-DOS and even Windows… For some reason the guy who sold the Watcom 11 included some techsupport thing he had going on, and included a tidbit about their being a ‘Default-windows application [-bw]’ (it’s on page 7 of C compiler settings) and it’s like the old Borland C++ for windows, or QuickC for windows days… It’s too bad I never knew it was there, as it allows for easy text mode stuff to win32 enviroments like … Win32s.
Now Win32s was one of those funny things, in which some smart people noticed that for the most part the ‘core’ of Win32 was a superset of Win16, and all they needed to do was hook the program loader, load the win32 exe into a relocatable space, then thunk all the win32 calls into win16 calls allowing a bunch of win32 applications to run on Windows 3.1! This was somewhat popular as most peoples machines at the time were not powerfull enough to run Windows NT 3.1, or they simply wished not to. And Windows 95 was going to be nearly another 2 years away…
Anyways, I’ve always thought SIMH was cool in that it’s super portable, so spending 20 minutes clearing out the ‘win32 console’ specific stuff from the code, I was able to build up a version that not only runs on Win32s on Windows 3.1, but also supports the TCP/IP remote console.
Here is a screen shot of my Windows 3.1 running under Virtual PC, telnetted to itself running the simh microvax running VMS 4.7

A Win32s VAX!

Anyways it’s too little too late, but I think it’s still cool. The neat thing about this is since it’ll run on Win32s is that it’ll run on dammed near any emulator as it’ll conform to such a subset.. Or so I’m hoping. I imagine it should also run under OS/2 3.0’s win32s emulation as well… And yes I’ve tested it with Win32s 1.25a that’s before Microsoft ‘fixed’ it to break all the OS/2 users out there…