Subject: Questions about FyOS

From: "Terry O." <sandstar.geo@...>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:05:58 -0000

I need to look in my van to see if my mailstations are still there or
if they ended up at goodwill.  If they are, I'll try to load the new
OS files and play around some.

I was reading your livejournal and am impressed :-) but since I'm not
a c coder and only know that cp/m preceded ms-dos (well, overlapped
some, IIRC) what can I expect to do with it?  Maybe if I list some
things, you can tell me if they are ever remotely possible?

- Simple memory games or flashcards for the kids?  
- Pull weather, headlines, whatever from a direct connected
internet-enabled pc?  (Along the lines of ybox?)
- Smart Keyboard for a pda with a serial connection?
- Dumb terminal for a server box?

From what you've written, they don't seem totally impossible. I really
like the idea of using a MS like this:

http://www.jtsystem.ca/touchamp.htm

Of course, I know that the Palm OS has a lot more memory available but
the serial connection to the WinAmp machine is cool.

----

One thing that I've always thought would make the MS useable as is, if
I could use a null modem connection to put any text I'd written onto
my main pc.  You seem to be able to talk to the unit, so is that
something you could document how to do?  I do have an old external
modem and null modem adapter.  I even have an ancient parallel port
external hard drive that I could dig out and use.       

Anyway, thanks for sharing all your work!

Terry

---

From: "Fr. John & Pybta. Phylis" <ke7doy@...>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:42:16 -0000

> Anyway, thanks for sharing all your work!
I made a cable from a standard rj11 cord and an old 9V wall cube.  I 
cut the red wire and hooked the wires from the wall cube to either side 
of the cut.  (afaik the polarity does not matter.) Plug one end into 
your computers modem and the other into MS.  Change the setting to not 
wait for a dial tone before dialing and fax the document to a blank 
phone number.  I use an OCR to reconvert the tiff image to text.  You 
have to save each 500 word block seperatly.

---

From: "Jeff" <fyberoptic1979@...>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:45:21 -0000

--- In [email-masked], "Terry O." <sandstar.geo@...> 
wrote:
> 
> I was reading your livejournal and am impressed :-) but since I'm 
< not
> things, you can tell me if they are ever remotely possible?

Well if I could put actual CP/M on it, there'd be lots of 
applications that could be run natively.  The problem is the memory 
layout of the Mailstation, and how CP/M and applications compiled for 
it expect a slightly different memory layout.  Changing it would 
require a hardware modification to the unit, which is probably above 
the head of most casual Mailstation modders.  Possibly above mine as 
well, considering the small traces on the board involved in doing it!

That's pretty much why I was working on FyOS, which would be similar 
to CP/M, but unfortunately not be compatible with its applications.  
Possible exceptions might be in cases where the source code to one 
might be available and easily modifiable.  Ones without source just 
seem too hard to do anything with.  I tried to decompile and modify 
Zork, for example, but once I started going into the assembly code 
and realizing just what a job that would be, just for one program, I 
found it just wasn't viable.  I was having to completely learn what 
every bit of the code did before I could even begin modifying it, and 
considering it was all in assembly, that's a bit hard.

Most applications for FyOS would probably have to be written by me or 
someone else who learned the ins and outs.  But since I figured out 
how to compile things in C for it, there might be a few folks who 
could do it once I had a better version of FyOS out.  When I last 
worked on it, I was still at the stage of developing a storage 
method, which would be a pretty important part to being able to have 
applications on there.  At the moment, people can write programs in C 
with what I've done so far, but they'd still have to be transferred 
individually.

You made some pretty good suggestions though of the sorts of programs 
that I too would like to see.  One being something like a PDA 
keyboard, since I type pretty quick on the PC, and it's extremely 
limiting to try and peck stuff out on a PDA screen's keyboard.  I 
think my Palm would be a much more useful tool if I could use the 
Mailstation to type stuff into it.  

The other good suggestion is the dumb terminal.  I run one particular 
server completely headless, and it would be handy to be able to 
interface it directly without having to SSH in from elsewhere at 
times.  I also have one of those Fonera router things which runs 
Linux, and think it would be neat to interface the Mailstation with 
it, giving the Fonera (which has wifi) a keyboard and screen to work 
with.  With a battery pack, the Fonera could be mobile, since it's so 
small.

The problem with making any sort of serial connection though is the 
lack of a serial port.  The Mailstation uses a modem chip, which 
unfortunately directly outputs to a phone line.  I haven't looked 
over the datasheet for the chip very thoroughly, so I don't know if 
it might have any pins to tap into the serial port of it directly, 
but even if one could, soldering onto those pins would be extremely 
tricky.  The other alternative is using the parallel port of the 
Mailstation to emulate a serial port, which would require very 
precise programming to time the speed of a serial data.  It would 
probably also require a bit of hardware to be plugged between the MS 
and PC, to convert the signals from the parallel port into the 
voltages that a serial port wants.  I've managed to get away without 
such conversions in the past on other projects, but that only worked 
when talking to my laptop's serial port, and not on my desktop 
machine.

I have kind of made a dumb terminal to my PC before in a way, by 
writing some software to send keystrokes to the computer, then send 
them to an IRC chat room, and then send any output from chat back to 
the Mailstation screen.  This was all done through the parallel 
laplink cable though that I use to load FyOS.  One could probably do 
something similar with a Linux machine for an actual terminal, but it 
wouldn't be as simple to setup as just a serial connection.

But yeah, I think perhaps trying to emulate the serial port is 
probably something good to try sometime.  With that, it would open up 
a few possibilities in general.  I'm just not sure if I have any of 
the chips around to do the serial conversion at the moment for 
testing.

---

From: "Jeff" <fyberoptic1979@...>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 06:51:59 -0000

--- In [email-masked], "Fr. John & Pybta. 
Phylis" <ke7doy@...> wrote:
>
> I made a cable from a standard rj11 cord and an old 9V wall cube.  
> I cut the red wire and hooked the wires from the wall cube to
> either side of the cut.  (afaik the polarity does not matter.) 
> Plug one end into your computers modem and the other into MS.  
> Change the setting to not wait for a dial tone before dialing
> and fax the document to a blank phone number.  I use an OCR 
> to reconvert the tiff image to text.  You have to save each 
> 500 word block seperatly.
>

I once had two modems that were able to talk to each other without a 
line simulator, and crossed my fingers in hopes that the Mailstation 
could talk to my PC's modem the same way.  But alas, that wasn't the 
case.  So I also had to build one of these too.  Mine ended up kind 
of sloppy since I didn't solder any of it, but it gets the job done 
at a fair connection speed. 

Here's a reference on how to make one for anyone interested:  http://
www.jagshouse.com/modem.html

Somebody emailed me with interest in downloading emails off the 
Mailstation without having to do this, and I think that's a good 
idea.  I had also considered it before myself, since it's pretty 
handy for writing stuff on.  So the next thing I work on will 
probably be a way to just download all the email off the unit via the 
parallel laplink cable, which would be a lot easier/faster than the 
modem connection stuff.  I doubt it'll be hard, it's just a matter of 
diving back into all that Mailstation code again!

---

From: "iwireless2001" <waynem@...>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:52:38 -0000

Jeff, I would like to thank you for all the work you have done on 
this project !!!

Were you able to find out what the internal modem had for 
parameters ??  Baud rate, parity ???

Also is there some pin on the serial/parallel port that could be used 
as a PTT/transmit pinout when the modem goes into transmit mode ??

My thinking is to use this as a dumb data terminal in a mobile sense, 
connecting to some 2 way radio units.

Thanks,
Wayne

--- In [email-masked], "Jeff" <fyberoptic1979@...> wrote:
> Phylis" <ke7doy@> wrote:

---

From: "Jeff" <fyberoptic1979@...>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:59:46 -0000

--- In [email-masked], "iwireless2001" <waynem@...> 
> Jeff, I would like to thank you for all the work you have done on 

Thanks a lot!  It wouldn't have been possible without all the hard 
work of Cyrano Jones though, who I thank for that in turn.

> parameters ??  Baud rate, parity ???

Different model Mailstations appear to have different modem speeds.  
There's a list in the Database section of the group here.  The one 
mine uses though is 33.6kbps, using the chip RCV336ACFW/SP.  There's 
a datasheet for it in the Files section here, in the "part files" 
directory, if you understand electronics enough to look over it.  I 
would assume it defaults to 8-N-1 parity, but I have no idea.  I've 
never written any code to access it myself as of this time.

> connecting to some 2 way radio units.

The modem chip itself might activate some pins when it's using the 
modem, but I haven't read the datasheet in any detail to know.  It'd 
be hard to take advantage of that anyway since the pins are so tiny 
on that chip.  

That's an interesting concept though.  I honestly have never worked 
with any sort of half-duplex audio equipment with a data connection, 
but I assume it can be done.  I don't think a standard modem would 
work, however, since as far as I know, it requires full-duplex, 
particularly to negotiate the connection, but to maintain it as well.

The only thing I can figure that you could do would be to use some 
sort of external hardware to modulate data into something that could 
transmit via audio, and use the Mailstation's parallel port to talk 
to that device.  Not exactly what you had in mind I guess, but that's 
the only way I can figure that it could be done.  I don't know enough 
about that sort of thing to know what sort of device you'd need for 
it.