Internet Access with a PC-XT clone.
By: Bill Boas

If you think you can't get on the Internet and World Wide Web
with a 17-year old 8mhz, Intel 8088, PC-XT, think again.

You can do it at blazing speed if you are willing to learn a few
`old' tricks, and can dispense with the graphics that are often
just tricky window dressing to the information content of a
website. Also, read on if you can't stand the huckster
advertisements that intrude upon your Internet experience.

What today's computer power and speed freaks don't know, or have
forgotten, is that there are many ways to configure a system with
an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to access the information
highway.

For sport, I am writing this story with a 1984 IBM XT clone,
running an 8Mhz CPU with a text editor of 3116 bytes. That's bytes,
not kilobytes. This tiny editor produces, marks, cuts, pastes, and
prints ASCII text that can be used with any word processor, on any
computer.

I found this particular 15-year old XT when I stopped at a
neighborhood house sale in a Denver, Colorado, USA suburb. It was
sitting at the end of an adjacent neighbor's driveway with some
other stuff and a sign saying `free'.

The owner said it came from a business, had a hard drive, but he
couldn't get it to boot up. Intrigued, and feeling sorry for a
machine essentially fated for the junk pile, I took it.

Back home, I removed the case and found that the disk controller
card was loose. I reset it, and it booted up perfectly, revealing
640K of memory and a 20MB hard drive. It also had a 360K 5.25 inch
floppy drive, and came with a sharp monochrome monitor driven by a
Hercules graphics card, allowing full graphics for DOS
applications. A serial and parallel port provided for an external
modem and printer.

I cleaned out many old files, found less than one megabyte of
IBM PCDOS 3.3, and a 16-year old, 35,238 byte communications program
that I will use to transfer this file to my ISP with an external
9600 baud modem. Once there, still using this XT, I can e-mail the
story anywhere. In this case, Europe.

Internet access is relatively easy for XT machines, 286s and 386s,
or any computer. You just need to remember, or want to learn to use
the command line of DOS, or other early PC operating systems.

To get on-line, look for an ISP that is able and willing to provide
a dial-in UNIX or LINUX `shell account.' UNIX is the 30-year old
operating system that drives the backbone servers of today's
Internet. LINUX is a PC version of UNIX that increasingly is
powering servers at many independent ISPs.

To speak of UNIX in the context of this story is to speak of LINUX,
they are virtually the same. Dialing into a LINUX shell account, as
I do, is like dialing a bulletin board system (BBS), only you also
have to learn about two dozen simple LINUX commands to make full
use of what is offered.

Once on-line, the text content of the `information highway' is at
your command, and you can truly become a `power user' if you learn
other LINUX commands. You can FTP, Telnet, Gopher, and get into the
bowels of the Internet in ways difficult through most popular
graphical browser interfaces.

E-mail and reading the Internet's thousands of USENET newsgroups is
simple because most LINUX shells use PINE an easy-to-use program,
that does both from a simple menu.

For writers, researchers, and text information junkies, the World
Wide Web's graphics often just get in the way, and create bandwidth
bottlenecks that make the loading of some graphics-lading websites
slow, fickle, and tedious.

Not so, when you have a LINUX server at your disposal. With LYNX
the text browser that's a part of UNIX/LINUX systems, a couple of
keystrokes, a few seconds of `narrow bandwidth' text transmission,
and up pops what you searched or `surfed' for.

At 14,400 baud any DOS machine I have, including this XT, is faster
loading info from the net than a friend's America Online account
using his Pentium 300mhz machine, 56 K-baud modem, pushing graphics
through Windows 95. Once connected to an ISP's UNIX or LINUX
server, `speed' on the net for text is a function of the modem not
the CPU.

The server actually sets the speed, and it is usually connected to
a T1, or above, with your machine being only a dumb terminal. So
speed is relative to how fast you want text to appear on your
screen.

That applies to downloading and uploading files as well. To my
surprise, the little communications program I found on this XT
supports 9600 baud which took only a few seconds to transmit this
story. Working with text only, I find 14,400 baud great for text
file transfers, since the files I want are usually under 500kb.

There's another aspect of having your machine a dumb terminal
connected through your LINUX shell account. Your machine is not
directly connected to the Internet, only your server is. This means
you have a de facto firewall from nasty viruses some madman is
hoping to clandestinely infect your computer. However, when you
download stuff, you are on your own to properly screen it. Thankfully,
most modern viruses are targeted to Microsoft Windows applications not
good old DOS.

Graphics, if you really need them to get that important map, chart,
etc. are possible from DOS and your LINUX/UNIX shell account if the
system administrator has toggled `allow ppp' in his root setup
files. In that case, you can enter `ppp' after the login and
password and start your DOS graphical browser like ARACHNE to get
full graphical access. How to do that is beyone the scope of this
article. This takes the memory of a more powerful DOS machine than
a PC-XT, however.

For this purpose, I usually use a 486DX-4 100mhz clone on
the Internet. Configured with a late version of ARACHNE it also has
Windows 3.11 and a graphics converter so I can download graphic images
without using ARACHNE if I need them, and view them off-line.
That's about all I use Windows for, I'm a 90 percent DOS user. As
a writer, my word processor of choice is Wordperfect 5.1 for DOS.

To make full use of any LINUX shell and its `Lynx' text browser,
e-mail, and newsreaders, you need a communications program that
supports VT-100 terminal emulation. Pine and Lynx seem to work best
at VT-100.  Ten year old programs like Hayes Smartcom, Procomm
Plus, COMIT for DOS, and the new Cyclone from India do the job
perfectly.

Used computer stores, thrift shops, and neighborhood sales are a source
of these older but useable programs and equipment. Any day of the
week in any good sized American town, I could find a computer,
monitor, keyboard, modem, and software suitable for Internet access
for under $25.00 USD. Maybe not all in one place, but give me the
money and about four hours.

Odds are, there's an ISP near you that will provide a UNIX or LINUX
shell account if you ask. With that, and any old computer, you can
boot up and surf the `Net' as fast as the best of them. However,
when you find one they are probably not going to offer you any
support beyond setting it up. You are expected to know what you are
doing when you ask for a shell account. But if you are already a
DOS purist or `wannabe,' you already know that the learning curve
is part of the fun.

It is not all that formidable however, as plenty of used books on
both DOS, LINUX, and UNIX commands are available to get an
orientation to the keystrokes necessary to make you a virtuoso.
Also, programs like PINE and the LYNX browser have help menus to
ease the way.

Once you know how to use a dial-up UNIX or LINUX shell account, you
are virtually independent of computer platforms to access your
files and the information highway at home or travelling. All you
need is any computer with a modem working to dial into your ISP,
although if you are travelling, it may cost you a long-distance
phone charge to do so.

Most LINUX shell accounts in the USA cost about $10/month, about
half of normal graphical Internet Access. The assumption on the
part of ISPs is that: (1) you must be a serious professional to ask
for a shell account; (2) therefore they know they don't need to
provide you support; and (3) your use of their servers take up very
narrow bandwidth.  So don't abuse ppp access if you find out you
have it with your shell account.

Does `obsolete' mean anything when it comes to computers?  It's
relative to what you need and use. NASA, the US Space Agency, would
have loved to have this `obsolete' 15-year old XT-clone with its
Hercules Graphics display in mission control when they flew the
Apollo moon mission in 1969.

There's more computing capacity in America's computer scrap heaps
than anyone can imagine. Almost all of it can access the Internet
in some way, if not completely.

It's time to challenge the philosophy of `obsolescence' that sneers
at using old computers and small, efficient, operating systems and
programs to do today's work on the Internet.

-eof-

The author is a Denver, Colorado, USA writer and researcher who has
been on-line since 1986. He was a former reporter with The Wall
Street Journal, Business Week magazine, and United Press
International (UPI). Comments or questions to: wboas@chisp.net