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From: medin@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Kermit and such over Telnet sessions
Message-ID: <1991Feb1.064425.17475@riacs.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 91 06:44:25 GMT
Sender: news@riacs.edu
Reply-To: medin@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin)
Organization: NASA Science Internet Project Office
Lines: 32

Hi folks.  I have a peculiar problem that needs solving.  NASA has some popular
BBS systems that is only support RS232 connections (basically, the BBS software
runs on toy computers - No real OS), but people want Internet access to these
resources.  So we wired up some of the RS232 ports to some Annex terminal
servers, and played some rotary games so that users can telnet directly
to an address that looks like they telnet to the BBS system.  

The problem is, people then try and ftp to that address, and well, that
doesn't work.  Many of the users have PC's they are telnetting from,
and so they don't have many options.  So, is there a TCP/IP package out there
that "connects" a telnet connection from the PC to a com: port, in such a 
way that the PC user can run procomm or kermit or some such package, but
instead of dealing with a serial port, be fooled into running over a telnet
connection?  Thus they could telnet to the terminal server, be attached 
to an RS232 port, and run kermit or ymodem, etc.. over the network 
connection from their PC.  I doubt anything like this exists for Mac's, but
I'm hoping some vendor has such a package for the PC...

I know the right solution is to get rid of the toy computers running the BBS and
replace it with a real computer, but the people who take care of such beasts
didn't exactly write the BBS software to be portable, and they don't want to
invest money in rewriting the BBS software for Unix...  Oh yes, they don't
just want to make all the files anonymously FTP'able from another system, because
they want to keep track of what BBS users are grabbing what files, etc...

Any help or ideas would be appreciated...


							Thanks,
							    Milo

PS Usual disclaimers apply.