Terminal over Serial

Using your CoCo as a terminal

The Color Computer can act as a terminal device either out through the bitbanger serial port or using add-on hardware such as the Deluxe RS232 Pak. One will need to use terminal software for this. There are a variety:

RSDOS

• Twilight Terminal
• Netmate*
• Videotex
• Vidtex (for CompuServ)
• The Deluxe RS232 Pak ROM*
• The Direct Connect Modem Pak ROM**
• Autoterm*
• Ultimaterm*
• Others (search the Archive for 'comm' and 'term')

* These packages support the RS-232 pak
** This package expects the 6551 ACIA chip to be at $FF6C instead of the standard RS-232 Pak IO base of $FF68

OS9

• SuperComm
• xcom9
• osterm
• Others (search the Archive for 'comm' and 'term')

Connecting to a Linux shell over null modem

Once one has their terminal software on the CoCo working, one will need to configure agetty to listen on the Linux machine to provide a login prompt and start a shell. One can test this with:

   sudo getty ttyUSB0

This will provide a single session and doesn't pass some control codes but is good for testing. Once its working, configure it to run getty directly by initd or the system daemon. This will vary by distribution but most modern distributions will normally support something like:

   systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyUSB0.service

followed by

   systemctl start serial-getty@ttyUSB0.service

Modify ttyUSB0 to the appropriate device for your system, such as ttyS0 or ttyUSB1.

TERM setting in Linux

Linux will generally default to a vt100 or similar terminal. Depending upon the terminal software used, this should be modified to something more appropriate:

• dumb will work with most coco terminal software, but will not allow any manipulation of cursor positioning or screen clearing, meaning software that uses the ncurses library will not work, like vi, nano, top, etc. Technically, dumb expects an 80 column display, so even this mode may give some trouble for some terminal software.
• pcansi will (mostly) work for Twilight terminal and other packages that sought compatibility with 90s era PC BBSs.
• coco3 will work for many OS9-base communication packages. This termcap entry is based on page 689 of the OS-9 L2 Manual

One can adjust the terminal once in the shell with:

   export TERM=pcansi

Advanced termcap

If one of the default termcap entries aren't working for one's chosen terminal software, one will need to find the control codes for their terminal software of choice and build an appropriate entry. This may require looking through the terminal software's documentation or contacting the creator. Use 'infocmp' to dump an existing termcap file and 'tic' to compile a new one.

Videotex and its descendants (Deluxe RS232 Pak and Direct Connect Modem Pak) had many control codes available; see page 7 of the Videotex manual.

Similarly, Vidtex (Compuserv's software) also had many control codes available; see page 44/Chapter 7 of the Vidtex manual

Using a terminal (or terminal emulator software) to connect to an OS9 or NitrOS9 shell on your CoCo

Standard serial devices are:

• /T1 the bitbanger port
• /T2 An RS-232 Pak in the first MPI slot
• /T3 An RS-232 Pak in the another MPI slot
• /M1 A direct connect modem pak in the first MPI slot
• /M2 A direct connect modem pak in another MPI slot

Depending upon your OS9/NOS9 build, this may involve loading additional modules (such as scf/sc6551.dr and scf/t2_sc6551.dd).

Configure your serial device on OS9 or NitrOS9 using the 'tuneport' and/or 'xmode' commands. One will need to match the baud rate on both sides of the connection.

Once the port is configured, start a shell on the OS9 side with:

   shell i=/T2&

Replace /T2 with whatever is appropriate for your configuration. This will start a shell you can access from your PC's terminal software, such as Teraterm on Windows or Miniterm/Minicom/screen on Linux.