Captain’s log stardate 06.03.2019

I had a vision of having 8bit atari’s connected to internet. I don’t like to put fancy new stuff, SMD’s, fast processors inside retro computers, but times you need to take both of the worlds. Times have changed and now it is literally impossible to connect old modems to the telephone network. My idea was to make external device that “pretends” to be telephone line modem, but in reality it would be ethernet or wifi capable device.

I considered raspberry pi, mikrotik routers with rs232 ports and arduino. Then I came across a site www.atariproject.org and saw the same idea, but they used sio2pc and PC computer or advise a nice box Lantronix UDS-10 External Device Serial Server

It can emulate a modem with up to 115kbit speed , and You can connect it to atari via r-verter serial interface (similar to sio2pc). Has own webserver for configuration.

I look forward for testing it. The second part is to provide a modern BBS and software client for Atari’s. It should be a mixture of web/bbs and teletext – here are some ideas:

• Atari hypertext language – simplified html like content
• Possibility to refer to online source using file system like driver (at least within same connected server)
• offer links to pictures that can be viewed fullscreen in different formats
• probably use ST-mouse 🙂
• online CMS providing both Atari and standard HTML pages

Of course a brainstorming is needed